


ava's demon drabbles

by mooselady



Category: Ava's Demon
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Gen, High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 30,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7537921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mooselady/pseuds/mooselady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of fics i've posted over the past year condensed like a packet of 10 cent ramen noodles</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Baisemain - A kiss on the hand

The night terrors were getting worse. 

Odin refused to sleep after he made his pact; he’d wander around the house, aimlessly trying to find something to preoccupy himself with, anything to avoid having to meet Pedri. He was smoking himself into forced apathy, staring at the curls of whispy indigos through tired, sunken eyes. It was a dangerous game he was playing, going night after night without rest.

It changed after Ava had came into his room one night, apprehensively rubbing her hands together, trembling, teeth chattering. 

“I keep seeing that girl Prudith,” she explained in a hushed voice.

So he let her sleep in his bed that night. 

Eventually, it became routine. It only made sense, didn’t it? They could benefit from this symbiotic, unspoken ritual. Wrathia and Pedri could meet in their minds, and Ava and Odin could rest their bodies, letting their dreamselves escape to talk, exploring, teasing playfully with each other.

He liked how she wasn’t afraid to say what she _really_ felt while in her mind.

But Ava would think about Prudith. She’d remember the blood and the sickly plop of flesh on cold metal, the sight of a body being torn apart and put back together. And Odin?

Odin wouldn’t tell her what he saw behind closed eyes.

One night, caught between the waking world and the heavy sopor of the unconscious, Ava woke to hear Odin screaming.

She jolted in the bed, focusing her eyes on the dark-haired boy. He was shaking violently, curled up into himself, face tight and twisted in agony. He cried out, “ ** _Get away f-f-from me!_** ”

“Odin, wake up!” she called to him. She shoved his shoulder to and fro, trying to bring him back. 

He opened his eyes, red and glowing in the darkness, gasping for air. Leathery, purple skin writhed from his heart, up his neck, to his face. 

He acted like he didn’t know where he was, scrambling to feel the bed sheets around him, reaching up to touch his alien, leathery face.

He screamed again, causing Ava to jerk back, startled.

“ ** _G-G-Get h-h-him out of me_**!”

Odin clawed at his face, howling out some long-buried pain from the back of his throat; a dreadful, tormented cry of a boy.

“Odin! Calm down!” Ava implored, refusing to break her grip from his shoulders. 

He looked up and she saw something in his eyes that made _her_ afraid.

“He can’t get you,” she beseeched.

She waited for him to cease his shivering. She repeated slower, “He _can’t_ get you.”

Gently, fearfully, he whispered, “I don’t w-want th-this.”

Ava gulped, looking at the crinkled bedsheets around them. 

She realized with a sudden uneasiness that she _liked_ having Wrathia’s power; she liked the strength, the ability to make others go quiet when she spoke, the new found capacity to make entire armies hesitant on whether they should attack her or not.

She had never considered how anyone else had felt about their pact.

With an even more troubling realization, she could see the downhill spiral the older boy was falling into. 

And with every downhill spiral, there’s always a breaking point.

She moved her hands across the bed, reaching out to hold his own.

They were cold and worn and all sharp, bony angles. She looked at the dirt underneath his nails, the faint watercolor of indigo blood underneath pale skin; she studied the tiny scar on his ring finger from a childhood accident.

“I won’t leave you,” she stated decidedly, squeezing his hands.

The anxious glow of his eyes dimmed, letting her remember an Odin Arrow before his pact.

It made her stomach flip, but it felt right, so she leaned forward, placing her lips upon the threadbare skin of his knuckles.

He shuddered at the warmth of the kiss, watching her pull back with a small smile. 

“A-Ava,” he breathed. “I-I-I-”

He looked away, darting his gaze around the room, before settling them back unto her face.

“I’m glad y-you’re h-here.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duende - Unusual power to attract or charm

Odin sat watching the petite redhead from under the shade of a very old, ancient oak, his back resting against the trunk. Breathing in a thick flume of smoke, he eyed her meticulously, carefully.

This was getting bizarre.

He studied Ava as she stepped lightly through the meadow, reaching down to pick wildflowers. She grasped the end of her sundress, using it as a makeshift basket for her findings. Her long red hair fell over her shoulder as she stooped down for another flower.

Odin grazed the mouthpiece of his pipe over his teeth, entranced, completely captivated. 

It had to be her hair, it must be.

 _Why_ was he so fixated on it?

The crimsons and scarlets and bright ruby reds of her body constantly shifted, ebbing and flowing with her every movement. She was alive, warm, potent. 

It was the closest he could get to fire without burning himself. 

“Odin!” she called out.

Ava’s voice brought him back, making him focus on the small girl waltzing towards him.

“I made this for you,” she beamed. 

The girl held out a crown of flowers, a wreath of intimately entwined purples and reds and pinks.

“I, um,” he paused, ducking his head down to let her place it on him. “Th-Thank you,” he said, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

He straightened the crown, a tiny petal falling and sticking to his eyelashes. He pursed his lips, exhaling upwards to free it. He asked with a lop-sided grin, “Does th-this make m-me a King now?”

Ava laughed, stepping her bare feet over his outstretched legs, letting her toes brush over his shins.

He swallowed, blinking quickly and veering his gaze off to the side. 

The redhead swayed around the tree, treading lightly as she let her hand graze across the bark. 

“If you’re a King, what does that make me?”

Odin turned his pipe over in his hands, brow furrowed in concentration.

“A kn-knight,” he answered. “A w-w-warrior.”

She appeared from around the tree trunk, looking down at her traveling companion. He saw the magma churn under her skin, splotching her shoulders with brilliant gold.

“A h-hero,” he concluded. 

Ava looked away, absently picking at the tree bark. 

“Odin…” she spoke in a hushed voice.

“Who do you think I am?”

He shook his head, a bit puzzled by the question. A few petals from the crown loosened and fell unto his lap. 

“Y-You’re Ava Ire,” he said in return.

The girl let her eyes run down the aging tree. She brought her hands up to her chest, where the wooden drawer was exposed, not bothering to hide it around the enigma that was Odin Arrow.

She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it slowly, rubbing her thumb anxiously at the key tied around her neck. 

Odin saw the apprehension in her frown.

“H-H-Here,” he beckoned, patting the grass beside him. “Sit.”

She tugged at the hem of her dress, lowering herself unto the grass beside the boy.

He brought his legs forward, hooking his arms around his knees. They sat in silence for a few moments, feeling the warm summer light shine through the leaves. 

“S-Sometimes when y-you’re asleep,” he began, carelessly picking at grass. “Sometimes you t-t-talk. Like you’re h-having a conversation w-with someone.”

Ava looked at him quickly, the heart-shaped key swinging with her movement. She started to run her thumb over it, closing it tightly in her hand.

“I can’t talk about it,” she whispered. “At least not right now.”

The dark-haired teenager nodded. He knew something was odd, but he hoped, maybe with time, he could touch that flame, as deadly and dangerous as it would be.

The summer breeze rolled over the pair, causing Odin’s gaze to take notice of a bright red flower swaying near his foot. He plucked it from the earth, turning to place it behind Ava’s ear. 

He brushed her hair back, softly sticking the wildflower delicately beside her face, his knuckles brushing against the apple of her cheek. 

“T-T-Tell me when y-you’re ready,” he said. 

Ava looked away. 

If she was suppose to be a hero, then why did she feel like a killer?


	4. Chapter 4

Odin thought he was going to be sick.

“A-A-Ava…” he sputtered, grabbing the dining room chair for support. 

“Wh-What have y-y-you _done_?”

He stared at the smiling girl. She swayed on the heels of her clawed feet, hands behind her back, the deadly arch of her grin sharp as a knife.

“I went hunting.”

Odin slowly let his eyes roam over the bloodshed. There were corpses of animals from the surrounding forests littered across the kitchen floor, gnarled and twisted, scattered and thrashed, beaten or torn apart. The stench of iron made him take in shallow breaths. He wanted to get out, he wanted to get away from the carnage immediately.

He tried to control his breathing as he looked her from head to toe. She was smeared with blood, covered in it. He gripped the chair tighter when he saw her lick the red from her lips. 

He opened his mouth to tell her how much he despised the grisly predicament she had created, when his eyes traveled down to the kitchen table. 

A fox was staring at him with bleak, dead eyes, its throat ripped from its neck. 

Odin stumbled backwards, knocking the chair to the ground. A shock of cold ran through his body as his heart began to quicken. 

Now, he was _sure_ he was going to be sick.

He couldn’t face her; no, he refused to face her. The teenager turned, rubbing at his eyes, denying himself the right to cry, to panic. 

The mental image of the fang marks in its neck made him spin around and spit out, “J-J-Just! Just go! **_Get out_**!”

Ava smiled even wider. 

“No,” she cooed. 

Odin rubbed at his forehead, trying with great difficulty to ignore the fox as well as the sick bile churning in his gut. 

“Go outside a-and wash y-y-yourself off,” he directed at thin air. He wouldn’t look at her, he couldn’t. 

Ava sighed. It was happy, dreamy, blissful even. She ran a bloody hand over the kitchen counter, smearing the redness as she trailed over it.

“I don’t think I will,” she chimed. “You see, I like it.”

She pressed her hand against her cheek, looking up at the ceiling with golden doe eyes.

“I like the blood.”

She continued when he finally met her gaze.

“And I _like the blood on me_.”

Odin lowered his chin, staring straight at her, glowering with fervid intensity.

She was baiting him.

“G-Go outside,” he repeated, the words falling out more as a warning than a suggestion. “And w-wash yourself off.”

The girl’s smile was wicked in its flash of serrated teeth.

“ _No_ ,” she breathed.

Odin widened his eyes, both from fright and from surprise, as the realization hit him.

_That was **not** Ava Ire’s voice._

Instinct was telling him to run away from the unknown, from the supernatural being he had willingly let into his house. He wanted to run and tell his family; warn them and gather their weapons. They would have to find another way to save Magpie.

He took a step backwards, readying himself to flee, but stopped short.

He remembered the face of a small girl in a tattered dress, stumbling over his feet, skin burning to the brim with red-hot embarrassment.

That girl had told him he smelled nice, like smoke and pine trees.

She was still in that body, somewhere, she _had to be_.

“Ava,” he spoke aloud. 

She tilted her head in mock fascination.

“I’m washing the b-blood off of you.”

He didn’t wait for her to protest. Instead, he strode forward, reaching down and scooping her up unto his shoulder. 

“What are you doing?!” she screeched, bunching the back of his shirt with her taloned fists.

He said nothing as he lumbered up the stairs. He knew this was reckless, foolish even, as he knew she was more than capable of taking a life. He rounded the top of the stairs quickly, sliding on the rug and nearly tripping over his feet as he strode into the bathroom. 

“Put me down or _I’ll claw your fucking eyes out_!” shrieked that unfamiliar, foreign voice.

“Th-Then do it!” he yelled back arrogantly, throwing back the shower curtain and stepping into the tub. 

The alien jerked her elbow against the back of his neck, lurching herself upright so she could face him. She raised her hand, the tips of her claws pointed and razor sharp. 

Odin scrambled away from her struggle, her nails taunt and ready to tear his face off. He reached for the shower faucet and twisted it on full force. 

The water sprayed over the pair, causing Ava to knee him in the stomach as she wrestled to free herself. Her bare feet met the linoleum floor, and with its touch she pushed away, sliding over the slick surface and nearly toppling over in her haste. 

Odin caught her just as she turned, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his chest against her back. 

“C-Calm down!” he implored. 

She was blazing hot to the touch. He swerved his head away from one of her horns, refusing to let go of her wrists, ignoring the feeling of her skin as it rose to dangerous temperatures.

“I’ll kill you!” she snarled. “Let me go or **I’ll kill you**!”

“R-Really! Because I don’t b-believe for a goddamn _second_ that the Ava Ire I know w-would _ever_ kill someone!”

She went still. They stood under the running water, panting, the watercolor of scarlet swirling down the drain. Odin blinked rapidly, trying to see against the flow of water down his face.

He saw her shoulders droop, her head lowering to face the floor. 

He realized she was crying when she murmured thickly, “Then you don’t know me.”

The taller boy relaxed his grip on her, breathing out a tiny sigh of relief into her hair. 

“I kn-know this isn’t you. It c-can’t be.”

She was crying harder now, choking, spluttering up lava unto the wet floor. It hissed and simmered, infusing the air with the scent of sulfur. 

“You are wrong, you are so so wrong…” she heaved, sinking to her knees. He followed, releasing his hold on her, resting his palms gently over her shaking shoulders. 

He watched the blood pool around them, allowing the grimy layers to erode off of her. This wasn’t just blood from this morning’s “hunt”; this was blood from weeks, months ago, old wounds being torn open again and again but never being treated, never cleaned, never given the patience to heal.

Her hair stuck to her face as she cried, low mewls of heartache escaping her lips. 

He looked at the sharp bone jutting from the back of her neck, the shower water slithering in clear rivers down her shoulders. 

The laceration was raw, exposed. It was very, very real yet no one could see it, no one could persuade her to draw the poison out.

Ava Ire was hiding her wounds behind teeth and claws and scathing words.

“Y-You’ve got to,” he said slowly, the words trembling in concern, “you’ve got to s-start telling someone what’s w-wrong.”

Ava hiccuped, tilting her ear towards him, listening. A bud of magma gathered at the corner of her mouth, dropping unto his knee with a quiet plop.

He continued, “Or else th-this is just going t-to get worse.”

She hunched up her shoulders, burying her face into her arm, eyes closed tightly shut. 

“I can’t.”

Odin exhaled from his nose, pressing his forehead against the back of her skull. “You’ve got t-to try,” he whispered. “You need to t-tell someone why you’re s-so… _angry_ all the t-time Ava.”

Her crying slowed, the tears and blood and marrow finally cleansed from her body.

“Odin?” she asked, wiping away at the tiredness of her eyes. “Will you go for a walk with me?”

He spoke through a small smile, his heart lurching at the earnesty in her words. 

“I’d l-love to.”

They stood up, careful to not slip on the slickness of the floor beneath them.

He rest his hands on her shoulders, sliding them down to cradle her elbows in his palms. 

“And Ava?” he asked. She looked up at him, her face washed and eyes bright.

He laughed lightly, his voice catching in his throat with surprising emotion. 

“Please, no m-more hunting trips, okay?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 24\. Returned from the dead kiss

Odin Arrow had never felt more excruciating pain than this in his entire life.

Not when his ship had crashed, knocking him unconscious.

Not when he was starving to death.

Not when he received the wound beneath his ribcage.

 _Nothing_ could compare to this.

Amongst the chaos, he had convinced his sisters to retreat back to the ship, to escape the destruction the girl was causing. 

The girl. _That_ girl. Ava Ire.

Was it even really her anymore?

Odin approached her slowly, carefully, taking nervous steps over the corpses of dead soldiers. He walked unto the stage, hand outreached. 

“Ava?”

She turned. When the red of her irises narrowed, focusing on him, her mouth widened into a deadly smile, showing row by row of archaic bone. 

“ _Finally_ ,” she breathed, taking long, determined strides towards the boy.

He should have run. He _knew_ he should have run. Yet, Odin held unto some hopeless belief that she would calm down in his presence. 

What a goddamn fool he was for believing such a beautiful lie.

Ava moved closer as if she was going to hug him, or embrace him, or thank him for coming back for her.

In one swift motion, the girl pulled back her clawed hand, swiping the air between them swiftly.

Quickly, sufficiently, her nails tore across his neck, slitting his throat.

Odin stood there, unable to move, unable to _believe_ what had just happened. He choked, appalled, horrified.

Then he felt it.

The hot, sticky gush of blood running down his neck, down his chest, collecting over his collarbones.

The smell of iron as he looked down, only to see his shirt drenched in his own violet blood.

The shake of his hands as he reached up to feel the tear in his neck, the realization that the whole room was spinning and tumbling and crashing to the ground. 

The laceration across his throat wasn’t the worst pain he had ever felt in his life.

It was the look on Ava Ire’s face as she cupped his jaw in her hands, cooing, “It will be over soon, my love.”

Everything was going dark as he dropped to his knees, unable to breathe, unable to flee; a wounded animal caught in the grip of an adoring predator.

She was smiling as his head rested in her lap, bright violet blood pooling around them in a perfect halo, a murderous Pietà of her dreadful devotion.

He couldn’t even ask her one simple question as his mouth filled with thick, liquid heat.

_Why?_

_Why would you do this?_

There was nothing the prey could do as he felt his heartbeat become slower, and slower, and slower.

He was watching it unfold, as if he were a silent spectator of a massacre, a participant and an audience member all at the same time.

What a horrible paradox to be entangled in.

Odin’s ghost watched, weary and disheartened. 

What was the point of putting on a facade now? It was over. Finished. She had killed him in cold blood. 

The teenager remembered tying ribbons into Magpie’s hair, remembered her quick anecdotes and funny quirks. He remembered how he swore he would take care of his sisters no matter what.

He dropped his face into his hands. 

He had made a promise to her.

To his parents.

To _himself_.

And now, even in Death, he had failed. 

What a miserable, disastrous life to be fated to.

Odin looked up to see Ava stroking the top of his head peacefully. His body lay there, motionless, blood dripping from his open mouth, staring blankly with glassy, listless half-lidded eyes.

How bizarre it was, to look so peaceful as the Angel of Death curled its arms around him.

He moved away, unable to stand looking at such a scene.

His own body, one that he had tried so hard to keep alive for years, through the hardships and pain and suffering, was on the brink of becoming a corpse.

“She did a good job with the cut.”

Odin slowly turned to see Pedri with his arms crossed, gazing down at the pair; a girl glowing with fervent, fiery life, and the other, a boy on the cusp of death, his flesh becoming colder and colder with each passing second.

“Very clean. Very through. She sliced both arteries. _And_ your vocal chords so you couldn’t scream for help.”

Odin glowered darkly at the words.

If this was the end, then why not say what he wanted to say?

“Shut the f-f-fu-f-fu-” 

Pedri smirked as Odin struggled to get the word to come forth.

“-f- **FUCK** up y-you three-eyed, satanic bastard.”

The giant continued as if he hadn’t heard him.

“Personally, I would have torn you apart, limb by limb, but-” he stuck his hand out knowingly, “-my wife probably thought this would give me enough time.”

Odin narrowed his eyes.

His _wife?_

Pedri saw the confusion on the younger boy’s face.

“You really are more stupid than you look,” he sighed. “There are _two_ souls inside that girl’s body. My wife happens to be one of them.”

Odin felt the resentment settle into his core. 

Fate was playing an awful, sadistic joke on him, even in the midst of the afterlife. Of _course_ the girl he had hopes for would have a demon just like him.

Of _course_ fate would align their curse to coincide on the same timeline.

He shook his head, asking, “Enough t-t-time for wh-what, exactly?”

Pedri stared at him with impenetrable, icy red eyes.

“To convince you to pact with me,” he answered matter-of-factly.

Odin barked out a dry, clipped laugh.

“N-Not this shit again,” he murmured. 

Pedri sneered callously, “Pact with me and your pathetic life will be spared, along with your pathetic excuse for a body.”

“L-Leave me alone,” Odin shot back, retreating further into himself. “I already kn-know my d-death means _nothing_ to the universe.”

_So what was the point of a second chance?_

He could see her, he could picture Magpie smiling and laughing as they took evening walks down the riverside. She would run ahead, shouting at him to keep up, finding smooth stones and picking buttercup flowers, handing him these little treasures with loving pride.

_God **dammit.**_

“Wh-What do you w-want?” he spat out. “No m-more games. N-No more of y-your freaky mind tricks.”

Pedri was drifting away from the bloody crucifixion on the stage.

“I need your consent to share your body.”

Odin wanted it to be over, he wanted to watch the final flicker of life be snuffed out from those dying eyes.

But his sister needed him.

And he refused to turn his back on her.

“What do I g-get in return?” he questioned.

The giant wraith was stalking towards him, curls of satin smooth smoke billowing around the stage.

“The power to save your family,” he answered.

Odin took one last glance at his body. Ava was humming lullabies, as if the singing song of death was a childhood game of playhouse. 

“If you die before you wake,” she whispered. “Do not cry and do not ache.”

“I should l-let it happen,” Odin said to himself. “I should d-die and leave this all behind.”

“Nothing’s ever yours to keep, so close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Pedri stuck out his hand, the palms wrinkled and folded with thick, indigo skin.

“Is it a deal?” he pressed.

Odin could feel his heart reaching its final tether, his body drained of blood.

In a split second decision bordering on madness and resignation, the teenager grabbed the demon’s hand in agreement.

He didn’t expect the reaction to be so instantaneous. 

Pedri yanked him forward, causing their intangible spirits to collide and mesh, molding into a red and indigo disarray of thoughts and memories and emotions.

Odin felt the smother of smoke inside his lungs, unlike anything he had ever felt when breathing in the florem mortem.

He realized the sickly smolder was coming from inside him as the world became too bright, too distant, too small. He was drowning in it, eyes closed tightly shut.

Odin Arrow was falling down the rabbit hole with nothing to hold unto.

And with no end in sight, he just kept falling, falling, falling.

———————-

The first thing he realized when he woke up was how dry his throat felt.

Odin blinked quickly, taking small quick gasps as his eyes adjusted to the white light of the florescents above him.

He heard the hum of electricity, the drip of a far-off faucet, the sound of hushed voices behind white walls.

Wait.

He shouldn’t be able to hear everything _that_ precisely.

He lifted himself up, rubbing at his head, taking in the view of the spaceship’s interior. He could see his brother’s jacket lying discarded over the pilot’s seat. 

So Olai _didn’t_ leave him at Titan’s HQ. That was a surprise for the ages.

“Good morning sleepyhead.”

He jerked back to see the small redhead beside the bed, her chin resting on the top of her folded arms. 

She smiled, revealing those devilish, yellowed teeth.

Odin drew back, pressing himself against the wall. 

Wide-eyed he rasped out throatily, 

“Y-You k-k-killed me.”

Ava rolled her eyes, laughing lightly, swatting at the air.

“That’s all linguistics really. I like to think I was moving things along.”

Odin shook his head, gulping, small tendrils of purple skin darkening along his arms. He reached for his throat and let his fingers brush over the thick gauze wrapped around his neck. He remembered the sharp gash, the sting of his veins being sliced open, the agonizing wait as his body was drained of life.

“Y-You _murdered_ me.”

Ava stood, resting her hands on her hips.

“Murder is _such_ a strong word.”

She lifted her knee unto the bed, leaning closer until they were inches apart.

“You’re n-not Ava Ire, are you?” he said, curls of red smoke escaping from the back of his lungs. The tiny girl who had seemingly transformed into the galaxy’s most wanted criminal placed her palms on either side of his face.

She breathed in a hushed voice,

“Welcome home, my beloved husband.”

With that, she pressed her lips against his in a cherished kiss.

Odin wished he had let his soul become nothing but cosmic stardust. He wished he had let it die and wilt and be forgotten as he felt her fangs pierce his bottom lip, causing trickles of violet blood to flow down his chin.

What a cruel, unfortunate fate it was to be joined in unholy matrimony.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3\. Drunk/sloppy kiss

For once, the apartment was quiet. 

Maggie and Ava had gone out earlier that evening, no doubt on Maggie’s insistence that Ava needed a night out on the town. 

As always, Odin had shut himself away in his room; so with nothing but peace, Gil set to work on multiple papers and essays that were due. 

He heard Odin’s door swing open down the hall, a tad too forcefully and recklessly Gil presumed. He glanced at the clock on his desk. 

11:19 pm.

He tapped his pencil against his cheek. 

There was _still_ so much work to be done.

He saw the dark silhouette of his roommate appear around the corner before he could register the state he was in. Odin leaned against the doorframe of Gil’s room, rubbing at his face, eyes swimming and shoulders slouched.

“H-Hey,” he murmured thickly.

“No,” Gil shot back, continuing to scribble notes, running his finger down the lengthy paragraphs of his textbook.

“No? N- _No_?? Wh-”

“No as in **No**. I’m not having sex with you right now,” he added sternly.

“ _What_?? Wh-What?? Why w-would you think-”

Gil sighed, pointing his pencil at the dark-haired teenager. 

“Coming in here sloppily drunk, in nothing but your ridiculous fox-print boxers, and saying ‘ _Hey_ ’ are all Odin Arrow language for ‘I want to screw around.’”

Gil returned to his notes, briskly adding, “You forget I know you, Odin.”

Odin squinted, annoyed. He stumbled into the room, reaching for the bed, but missed, unable to grasp at the sheets in his confused state. 

Gil stared blankly as he watched his roommate fumble at the edge of the bed before hoisting himself unto it and plopping down, stomach pressed against the mattress. 

Gil leaned his head. 

“I also don’t know why you feel the need to pass out in _my_ bed every single time you get drunk.”

Odin purred carelessly into the mattress, “Because y-your bed’s so soft.”

“Mhmm,” Gil hummed to himself, continuing to highlight important passages in his textbook. A minute passed, and he looked up from his studying to see the art student watching him. 

His face was flush, pressed against the mattress, black hair sticking out messily, a hint of a purple blush playing across his cheeks.

Gil had seen him like this before. The circumstances at the time were _extremely_ different, however.

For instance, neither of them had been wearing clothes.

Odin smirked. 

“Wh-Why are you blushing?” he asked, his voice rising and carrying in sing-song fashion. 

The medical student leaned back in his chair, resting his folded hands on his stomach. 

Why did he always get pulled into these games?

“You look like you want to get fucked,” Gil stated calmly. 

The atmosphere seemed to change with the words.

Odin let a devilish grin stretch across his mouth. It was rare, but he always liked when Gil was straightforward and blunt about these things.

“Then c-come over h-here and fuck me,” he whispered.

The white-haired boy simply shuffled his feet back and forth, letting him swivel in his chair. Back and forth, back and forth, like tides of the ocean.

He was waiting for it. This was, after all, his favorite part of the game.

Odin bent his knees, then let his shins fall back to the bed with a defeated sigh. If he wanted it so badly, then he knew he’d have to drop his pride.

He mumbled incoherently into the bed cover.

“Hmm? I can’t hear you,” Gil called out.

“I s-said ‘please’,” he grumbled quietly. 

Gil didn’t move, eyebrows raised, clearly dissatisfied with such a weak effort.

Odin buried his face into the bed, before swallowing his pride and speaking out, loud and clear,

“Will y-you _please_ fuck m-me?”

At the words, Gil stood, forgetting the study sheets and notes and countless paragraphs of homework as he lifted himself onto the bed. He shuffled forward on his knees until he was above the other boy, straddling him.

Odin glared at him from the corner of his eye, his face still pressed into the mattress.

It was a strange thing, to witness such a feral creature be submissive on his own will, his own plea. 

“You’re so cute when you’re mad,” Gil said, running his fingers through the softness of his black hair. He knew how he liked it though.

Gil suddenly grabbed a fist-full of his hair, yanking his head back so his throat was bent, exposed. Odin looked up at the ceiling, panting out a quick “f-fuck” as Gil leaned forward, tracing his tongue over his jaw.

He brushed his lips over the corner of Odin’s grin before pulling him into a forceful kiss.

It was uncoordinated, sloppy, messy; no time was wasted as they parted lips, Odin letting Gil slide his tongue over his. 

He pulled back, letting go of his grip on the art student’s hair. 

“You reek of alcohol,” he stated, unwrapping his legs around the boy’s back, but not before smacking his ass. “Go brush your teeth.”

Odin sighed, pulling himself up and rolling off the bed. 

He staggered out of the bedroom, shooting Gil a questioning look.

“Yes,” Gil huffed, rubbing his forehead. “We’re still going to do it.”

He heard Odin whisper a “hell yes” to himself before disappearing around the corner and into the bathroom.

Gil had to admit it. 

His roommate really _was_ cute when he wanted something bad enough.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 14\. Kiss on the neck

At first, Ava thought her friend had injured herself on accident.

They were at Maggie’s locker, the green-haired girl rummaging haphazardly for her missing chapstick among the disorderly, chaotic mess.

“It’s here _somewhere_ ,” she muttered, pushing aside textbooks and clothes and a forgotten pair of gym shoes. 

Ava glanced over her friend’s face, at first to watch the gold star earrings flash against the sunlight, and then more carefully as her eyes immediately caught sight of an oval-shaped, red splotch on her neck, just below her ear.

Squinting, she pointed it out curiously. “What happened to your neck Maggie?”

The taller girl turned with a knowing smile, her brow raised.

“It’s a love bite,” she answered proudly, tilting her chin. 

At the words, Ava withdrew into herself, not knowing what to say.

She shuffled her feet, adjusting the bookbag on her shoulders. The final bell of the day had already rung, and the halls were empty. In the unusual peace and quiet, she felt the questions bubbling forth, but instead she looked away, studying the school bulletin board as if it were the most fascinating object in the world.

Among the disorganized mess of pins and post-its, there was a newsletter about joining the art club.

Apparently membership was at an all-time low this year.

Ava dropped her head, chewing her bottom lip. The art club really couldn’t survive if it was just her, Tuls, and Odin. Especially if the majority of the meetings were Odin heckling Tuls for using all the yellow paint, and Tuls lethargically telling Odin to ‘go smoke a bowl if you’re going to have a conniption about it.’

She frowned, unable to stop thinking about that _thing_ on Maggie’s neck.

What did a love bite even _mean_?

“Maggie, how did you get that mark?” Ava interrupted. 

She pulled her locker shut, signifying that she had completely given up on finding her missing chapstick.

“A guy just, you know,” she said, waving her hand around, trying to express her answer. “He just, kissed my neck? Sort of?” 

Maggie scooped her bag off the ground, throwing it over her shoulder as they started their walk down the hall.

“But? _Why_? What’s the point?” the redhead pressed. 

A teacher walked by them, giving the two girls a stern look. The pair waited until he had passed, then continued talking in low voices.

“Because Ava, it’s just a thing you do when you like someone.”

She pursed her mouth in silence, trying to understand the appeal exactly. Was it a mark of accomplishment? Or perhaps a way to boast your feelings for someone in an extremely profound, _noticeable_ way.

“I have track practice today,” Maggie spoke out, sidestepping down the adjacent corridor. “You have a ride home, right?”

Ava nodded, jutting her thumb in the direction of the student parking lot.

“Odin’s driving me home,” she said. She called out, waving briskly, “I’ll see you tomorrow alright!” 

“Alright, see you tomorrow!” Maggie called back. At the end of the hall, she added slyly, “Your neck better not be covered in hickies next time I see you Ava Ire.”

She rolled her eyes at her friend’s mischievous smile as she opened the building’s double doors. “You’re _so_ funny,” she quipped lightly as she exited the building and began making her way to the student parking lot.

The mystery of what could possibly be attractive in a hickey made Ava’s mind race with each passing step.

She wondered if there was any chance someone else might be able to answer her question.

—————————–

She was going to ask him.

On the drive home, Ava kept stealing glances over at the older boy, the sun playing tricks over his face and shoulders and neck as they rode in silence, past miles of seemingly never-ending fields of golden wheat and cornstalks.

His neck. She squinted at it, perturbed. She had never seen Odin with hickies on his neck. So why was that exactly?

The girl propped her bare feet against the dashboard, idly humming to the song on the radio, eyes fluttering from his neck, to the open road, to the colors of the moving fields beside them. 

It was always nice to share comfortable silence with a friend. 

The hot Spring air was rolling by, slicing through the rolled-down windows of the truck. Ava opened her mouth to say something, but then stopped short, brushing her hair from her mouth as it tossed wildly in the wind.  

 _Okay_ , she thought. _I’ll ask when we pass this mailbox._

She watched as they continued down the highway, past the mailbox.

 _Okay_ , she pressed more indignantly. _When we drive past that mess of roadkill up ahead I will definitely, most certainly ask._

Ava stared at the unfortunate creature as the wheels of Odin’s rickety truck rolled by it speedily.

She tapped her foot against the dash impatiently. They were going back to his house, a home nestled far from the town, surrounded by acres of forest. She knew the twins would be there, and there was no way she was about to bring up such a subject with their prying eyes and ears waiting, listening behind every corner.

The girl picked at a pimple on her chin before speaking out in an aloof tone,

“So, Odin. What do you think of love bites?”

The older boy turned down the radio, leaning in slightly.

“Huh?” he asked, eyes still focused on the road.

“Love bites. You know, hickies,” Ava repeated, studying the ends of her hair, flashing quick glances at her friend.

“Uh,” he began, looking out his side of the window. “I dunno. N-Never had one before.”

Ava shot up in her seat, recharged with new purpose. 

“Me too!” she exclaimed, pointing from herself to him. “So I mean, you know, we could, I don’t know…”

She fumbled through her words as Odin shot her quick glances.

“Do you want one?” she blurted out briskly. 

Odin jerked the wheel, suddenly going rigid at the question.

“Are y-you s-s-serious??” he stammered, the tips of his ears turning a bewildered pink.

Ava nodded, eyes wide as saucers.

“Okay, wow, you _are_ s-serious,” he said, blinking quickly, clearing his throat with a shake of his head. “Wh-Why the s-sudden interest?”

She answered with a sigh, brushing her toes over the floorboard.

“We’ve kissed and stuff but, I don’t know. I just wanted to know what it was like.”

The redhead slunk down in her seat, so her chin was resting on top of her chest. 

 _It was a stupid question to begin with_ , she brooded, picking at a loose thread in the seating’s interior. 

“G-Go ahead,” he said aloud.

Ava looked up to see him trying his best to put on a serious face. There was no denying the smile just begging to stretch across his mouth, however.

She sat up with a smile, pulling the seatbelt under her arm so she could reach him. She scooted closer, placing a hand on the back of his head and the other on his shoulder. 

Ava bit her lip. What was she suppose to do? Was she suppose to put her hands here? 

The landscape rolled by as the truck continued its journey down the country road. It was like a dream, a never ending moving picture. 

The sky. The sun. The open road. The smell of cut grass as the wind rushed through the cab of his truck.

She could see Odin struggling to control his grin as she leaned in, kissing him gently on the neck, just beside his throat.

He always did smell like pine and smoke.

The boy kept his eyes on the road, his gaze flickering from the asphalt to the red of her hair just below his ear. 

She always did smell like vanilla and flowery perfume.

“Am I suppose to bite you or something?” Ava murmured, more to herself than anything else.

Odin answered with a laugh, “Do wh-what ever you want.” He kept his hand resting lazily over the steering wheel. “Just don’t t-tear my throat out.”

Ava let out a laugh, mostly from nervousness, as she leaned forward once more, pressing her mouth against the soft, vulnerable underside of his jaw.

She bit into him, pinching at his skin with her teeth.

Odin gasped, sucking his breath in sharply at the pain.

Ava drew back, asking, “Did that hurt?”

He swallowed, answering, “Y-Yeah.”

“Oh,” Ava spoke quietly. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop.” She made to move back to her side of the cab when Odin added,

“No. I l-like it. Keep going.”

She looked up to see a faint purple blush creeping over the apple of his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t look away from the road for too long, but he glanced at her, offering a smile.

She’d seen that smile before. It was his silent way of saying, ‘I trust you. And I know you won’t hurt me.’

“Okay,” Ava breathed, trying to control the heated race of her heart. 

He felt her breath over the skin of his neck first, then that same biting, endearing pain. 

Odin wasn’t even sure why he felt like foolishly laughing as Ava made a small O with her mouth, pulling him in closer. 

“Oh my god,” he breathed softly, closing his eyes and loosening his grip on the steering wheel at her touch, her kiss. 

For a few seconds too long, the teenager seemed to forget he was driving a vehicle.

“ ** _Odin_**!” 

He jerked, his eyes shooting open as he registered what was going on.

They were on the wrong side of the road, the grill of a black truck speeding straight towards them, blaring its horn.

Ava shrieked, digging her nails into his arm as Odin swerved back unto the right side of the road. The truck swerved recklessly, barely missing the other vehicle as they flew down the highway.

“ **Shit**!” he yelled, clutching at his chest. Ava couldn’t release her fearful grip on his arm, taking short, quick pants, a strand of red hair caught in her mouth.

She screamed, mouth still closed, kicking out her legs. 

Gasping, Odin glanced at his rearview mirror. His eyes widened, his face becoming suddenly pale.

“Oh n-no,” he whispered. Ava watched him mouth obscenities before he seethed under his breath, “D-Don’t turn around, d-don’t t-turn around.”

The girl blinked, turning and looking out the back pane of clear glass of the cab.

She saw the black truck slam its brakes, making an extremely fast, hasty three- point road turn. In seconds, the other car was hot on their tails, barely brushing the bumper of Odin’s truck.

“God d-dammit,” Odin groaned, rubbing at his forehead.

Ava squinted, trying to make out who was now following them. She saw the shock of that familiar black hair, causing her to draw in a shocked breath.

“Is that-”

“Y-Yeah,” Odin interjected, releasing his foot from the gas pedal. “It’s m-my brother.”

Odin looked at his side mirror to see Olai jut his thumb out the black truck’s window, signaling for him to pull over.

He took a shaky breath, slowing the car to a stop as he drifted to the side of the road unto a grassy embankment. 

“W-Well, the good n-news is you’re here, s-s-so if he kills me, then at least there’s a w-witness,” Odin stated, putting the clutch in park and turning off the ignition.

Ava watched the truck pull in behind them. Moments later, the door swung open, revealing the Arrow brother as he took long, languid steps to the driver’s side of the truck. Odin rested his head against the steering wheel, staring at the floorboard in abysmal defeat.

“If th-there’s a God, let him st-strike me down now,” he said as Olai approached closer.

Ava could smell the nicotine curl into the cab of the truck as the heels of his boots clicked closer and closer. Odin lifted himself up, trying to control the nervous bounce to his leg. 

His brother propped an elbow over the windowsill, leaning forward so he could stare at them from behind black, emotionless shades.

The silence was deafening as Olai plucked the cigarette from his mouth and tossed it to the ground, rubbing it into the dirt with his foot.

“You realize you were going ‘bout a 60 in a 45?” the eldest Arrow spoke. His voice was flat, unreadable. Ava looked from Odin, to his brother, then back to Odin. 

She could sense the tension in the air, clear as day.

“Yes,” Odin answered coldly. 

Olai waited a few seconds before continuing. 

“And you realize you were all over the yellow line.”

Odin took in a deep breath, turning to face his brother. “Y-Y-Yes,” he repeated, trying to control the waver in his voice.

Olai stared, before reaching up and taking off his sunglasses with a slight lean of his head. There was no denying the look of confusion in his indigo eyes.

“Boy, the _hell_ is on your neck?” his brother asked. 

Odin’s eyes widened, the tips of his ears darkening into a flustered purple. 

Olai leaned forward, acknowledging the tiny girl in the passenger seat.

“Sweetheart, you been sucking on his neck?” he called out.

Ava gripped the seat, her nails digging into it with such an intensity that Odin was sure she was about to tear two whole chunks out of it. She could feel her face explode into a furious shade of red as Olai stepped back, barking out a laugh. He coughed into his hand, shaking his head. 

“Well, I guess I should be glad that was the only thing she was sucking there kid,” he added gruffly. 

Odin sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose as Ava screamed out a shrill, “ ** _WHAT?!_** ” She tore across the seat, resting her hand on Odin’s thigh and pointing a small finger in Olai’s face.

“Say that again,” she hissed, ignoring Odin’s quiet pleas to sit back down, “and you’ll be sorry.”

Olai drew back, chuckling to himself as he placed the sunglasses back over his eyes. 

“So the little Rabbit _does_ have bite,” he said. 

He addressed Odin, tersely adding, “I’ve got some errands to run. Watch your sisters. Meat’s in the freezer, you know what to do.”

With that, he turned on his heel, taking those same slow, menacing steps back to this truck.

Ava sat back down, tensely curling her fingers into the open air. 

“Oh, if I could claw that _stupid_ _arrogant_ grin off his face,” she seethed, her voice rising with strained fury.

Odin threw his head back with a laugh, both from relief, and from the mental image of his brother finally getting his comeuppances.

“Well, wh-when you do, m-make sure I’m there to see it,” he mused.

They watched as Olai’s truck went into reverse, then forward, making a sharp turn back unto the road as it headed towards town. 

The two teenagers seemed to relax in the sudden tranquility of the afternoon sun.

“And,” she continued with a sly grin, “I’ll take his sunglasses as a trophy.”

“Will y-you hang it over the fireplace?” Odin asked, mirroring her devious smile.

“Of course! There’ll even be a gold plaque that reads, ‘The Sunglasses Of Olai Arrow. May He Rest In Fucking Pieces.’”

“That,” Odin said, his shoulders shaking with laughter, “is t-terrible.”

“I know,” Ava beamed, tossing the fiery strands of her hair over her shoulder. “But someone needs to put him in his place.”

Odin ran his hand over the keys in the ignition, exhaling forcefully in agreement.

They sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the quiet drip of the engine as it cooled. 

Ava liked the sharp scent of metal and gasoline from his truck. It had become familiar, even welcoming, in every sense.

There always seemed to be the potential of adventure everytime they set out on the open road. And at times, for that reason alone, being a teenager didn’t seem so scary, at least not all the time. It was a hint that, with a little push, there were ways to make your own stories, your own memories, your _own_ adventures.

“I guess we should get going,” she said absently, her mind still going through the events that had led them to the side of this vacant highway.

“We c-could,” Odin began, tilting his head, “or we could f-finish what we started.”

Ava turned to see the smile on his face as he unbuckled his seatbelt. 

“A hickey almost got us killed,” she stated, laughing at the end of her words.

“Th-That’s true,” the dark haired teenager replied, moving closer until they were inches apart, her back pressed against the passenger door. “But it’s y-your turn little Rabbit.”

Both the teenagers were glad that of all the roads to get pulled over on, this one was the most deserted.

————————————

Maggie was the first to notice.

During cooking class, she shot icy daggers at Odin, glaring at the circular, purple bruise on the side of his neck. 

“So you’re not gonna tell us? You’re just gonna pretend that thing isn’t on your neck?” she questioned heatedly as the teacher took role.

Odin shrugged with bored, half-lidded eyes, his head resting in his hand.

It took every ounce of will-power for him not to smile as Ava pulled her braid over her shoulder, stealthily hiding the countless red marks trailing from her ear to her shoulder.

She began casually scribbling in her notebook, shaking her head as Maggie asked her what Odin’s problem was. 

She understood now.

There was a sense of pride in the bruise she had caused. 

And she could see in his face, that he could feel that pride too. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 20\. Exhausted parents kiss

He remembered the promise his father kept to his mother. 

As a child, Odin would watch distantly, from the kitchen table, or from the living room as his parents whispered; he could sense the unspoken agreement between them, as subtle as it was through quick glances and hidden caresses.

His parents could, remarkably, have entire conversations without speaking a single word.

On an unusually warm, sunny day, he asked his mother a question that had intrigued him for days as they picked vegetables from the garden. 

“Momma? Will I ever get married?”

His mother smiled, laughing lightly. 

“Someday, Odin. If you choose to.”

He leaned down, resting his hands on his knees as he watched a bee land on a tomato. It crawled unto the other side, disappearing from view.

“How will I know?” he questioned. “That they’re the one?”

She plucked another fruit from the vine. “You’ll know,” she answered, “when they become the only person in the room.”

He frowned at this answer, puzzled. 

The bee emerged from behind the tomato, taking off into the sky, a little adventurer on his own journey. 

It was only when he was older did he realize how important these stolen memories with his mother were, how fleeting and impermanent her nurturing love had been.

————————————

They weren’t exactly sure when sleep had become a luxury instead of a priority.

Ava and Odin hated the fact that a full night’s rest had become an inconvenience. They were constantly on the run, constantly on edge that Titan’s Army was going to ambush them at any moment.

It didn’t help that they were now responsible for the egg left in their charge.

On Wrathia and Pedri’s guidance, they had found it, nestled far away, hidden from any prying eyes and harmful enemies. Of course, it was on _their_ insistence that the two teenagers guard the egg at all times, at all costs, under any circumstances. 

“Listen,” Wrathia spoke, glaring daggers into their hearts during a mind-meeting, “watch my child with your _life_. It’s of the utmost importance that no one gets word of its existence.”

Ava sighed heavily, arms crossed. 

“First off,” Ava started, provoked with irritation at this new obligation, “you force me to stay with _him_ -”

She pointed at Odin, who stood beside her, equally annoyed.

“-because of your freaky weirdo husband.” 

She turned to Odin, quickly adding, “No offense.”

The older boy shook his head, raising his hands to his side, as he retorted, “No, I c-completely agree, this is r-ridiculous.” 

Ava continued further, “And now you want both of us to take care of your _kid_?”

Wrathia inhaled a deep breath, rubbing at her temples. 

“I don’t think either of you understand how critical this situation is. That child might be the very last of my species, and you’re here whining about simply watching it?”

Pedri stood beside her, glowering darkly at the teenager he was conjoined with in spirit. Odin glared right back, although he couldn’t help but move closer to Ava as the stare-down continued. 

“Wrathia, we’re teenagers! It’s not our job to babysit!” Ava countered, huffing indignantly. “We didn’t ask for all this!”

The Vengess Queen tapped her pipe against the arm of her chair. 

“Well then,” she seethed, the tips of her hair bristling with fiery sparks. “Welcome to parenthood, kids. Because if I or my husband find out you have abandoned our child, then I will unleash a Hell this universe hasn’t experienced since the dawn of time. **Got it**?”

Ava practically hissed at the woman as she turned on her heel, shoulders tense as she walked away. Odin followed, mumbling a quick, “Th-This is bullshit,” as they left the married pair. 

At first, the jokes and games had brought a few rounds of fitful giggles. Odin would ask Ava if she wanted scrambled eggs for breakfast with a sly smirk, pointing at the purple and gold egg nestled on the couch. 

Or on occasion, Ava would hide the egg, teasing Odin to “go find his kid”. 

“You’re getting warmer,” she snickered as he searched throughout the house, under pillows and blankets, or in the spaceship, usually stowed away in a utility closet. 

“You’re s- _so_ funny,” he quipped once he found it, cradling the egg in his arms. 

The jokes, however, seemed to halt when one day Ava was washing the dirt from the egg under the sink, steaming hot water running over the shell. 

She couldn’t explain why she became mesmerized by the colors, or the churn of magma coursing through the crevices, or the smoothness of the bright violet outer shell. 

The realization made her stomach drop, as hard as she tried to ignore it.

It didn’t ask to be Wrathia and Pedri’s child. It wasn’t its fault for being conceived, or to be the heir to a throne of ruthless royalty. 

It didn’t ask for its mother to be the devil reincarnate, or its father to be the embodiment of death.

Ava stared and stared, watching the water run over the vulnerable egg. 

She couldn’t ignore the empathy she felt towards this creature who, ultimately, would be born into a situation out of its control. 

Fate, it seemed, had been cruel to both of their souls.

Odin didn’t like the fact that he felt an extreme, underlying protectiveness over the egg. He refused to acknowledge it openly, biting his tongue when someone got too close to it, or restraining himself when someone spoke crossly about it.

He didn’t like the fact that suddenly, it seemed like everyone in the world besides Ava, was a possible intruder. 

He remembered the first night they had shared a bed, their bodies curled around the egg as they laid silently, facing each other. The magma swirled calmly, illuminating the darkness with its warm glow. 

“This,” he whispered quietly, “is f-fucking weird.”

Ava stared dully into the redness of his alien eyes. 

“I know,” she stated flatly. 

She turned on her side, looking away and facing the empty blackness of the night. 

“Just make sure it doesn’t roll off the bed.”

Odin chewed on the inside of his cheek. He reached out, scratching his nail lightly against the exterior of the egg. 

Upon his touch, it moved with a slight jerk.

At first, it startled him. He moved away, flashing his eyes up at Ava, who was falling fast asleep, her breathing slow and unhurried. 

He reached out again, resting his palm flat against the shell. It was comfortably warm to the touch, its light radiating in orange-yellow golds. He blinked, slowly letting his eyes roam over the light it made, as if he were trying to find shapes in a starry night-sky. 

When he saw it, he wanted to wake up the girl beside him, imploring her to look.

There was a heart naturally etched into the egg’s design. 

He hoped Ava wouldn’t notice that he pulled it closer, pressing it tenderly in the cradle of his arm.

A child was innocent, no matter who its lineage was, right?

—————————

One night after dinner, they sat on the couch, Ava resting the egg in her lap, her knees bent towards her chest. Odin licked his thumb, flipping the page in his book when she spoke out, “What do you think it will look like?”

Odin glanced up from his book on the other side of the couch, his toes pressed on the tops of her feet. 

He shrugged, answering nonchalantly, “It’ll h-have your eyes, probably.”

Ava lowered her legs, stretching them out until they were squished between Odin and the couch. 

“It’ll have your black hair, that’s for sure,” she commented, rotating the egg in her hands.

“Do you th-think it’ll puke lava, like you?” he said with a sly grin.

“Oh, Ha Ha. Very funny. If anything, it’ll be a walking scarecrow, like you,” she countered, laughing.

He chuckled, returning back to his book when Ava stopped herself, her heart seizing in frozen fear. She felt sick at the realization of their words.

“Why are we saying it’ll look like us?” she asked quietly.

Odin looked up. 

She continued, frightened. 

“Odin, this isn’t our child.”

The teenager dropped his line of sight to the egg in her hands. Her thumb was pressed against the heart shaped imprint he had irreversibly grown attached to.

“I d-don’t kn-know,” he breathed. “Why would we s-say that?”

The eerie confusion in the air seemed to only grow with the silence. 

This creature, this alien, was physically not their child.

So why did they feel that their souls had already taken some claim of its life?

———————–

The bioluminescence of the night was lit by their shared responsibility.

Lying in bed, he studied her. Her eyes were sunken, the corners of her mouth turned in a pout as their bodies lay surrounding the egg, always guarding, always watching.

“You l-look tired.”

Ava rubbed at the corner of her eye, a drop of lava budding from her tear ducts. 

“I _am_ tired. I’m exhausted.”

“You c-can’t sleep either, huh?” he asked. 

His friend shook her head. 

“No.”

Odin sighed wearily into his pillow, closing his eyes. “Name five of y-your f-favorite things,” he murmured. “Don’t th-think about it. Just whatever comes to mind.”

Without missing a beat she answered, “Rainy days. Watching the stars. When the leaves change colors. Girls in pretty sundresses.”

The redhead allowed her body to relax.

“And you,” she concluded. 

At her words, Odin opened his eyes to see a strand of red hair caught in her mouth, her eyes closed, resting peacefully. 

He reached out, brushing the hair from her face and over her neck, trailing the tips of his fingers over the roughness of her scarred shoulders. 

Odin wasn’t sure why everything he wanted to say suddenly came bubbling to the surface, a concoction of adoring words and loving sentences just bursting at the seams to be spoken. 

Despite the wrongs done to her, she was still a kind, benevolent spirit. 

Now he understood what his mother had said all those years ago. 

She really was the only person in the room, amidst an ocean of bodies and bustling crowds and loud mingling voices.

“Do you think,” he began, hushed, “wh-when this is over, it c-could just be you and me?”

Ava tilted her chin, fluttering her eyes open. 

She smiled, small and faint in its wake.

“Yeah. I’d like that. Just peace and quiet. You’ll be there every morning, right? When I wake up?”

The afterglow, like a fire in a hearth, washed over her face, eyes shining in hopefulness. His throat felt raw when he answered,

“I w-will. I promise.”

He moved closer, leaning in to give her a goodnight kiss on the forehead.

Ava wrapped an arm around him, scooting closer and exchanging a tired kiss on his chin.

The night seemed to have its own heartbeat, its own restful hum, as they fell asleep, the egg bundled protectively between their hearts.

Odin’s mother had once told her husband, “My greatest hope is that our children will never be alone in this universe.”

For once, the Fate’s design seemed to pay a particular kindness to the two teenagers; and, above all odds, a cursed burden had indescribably become a cherished blessing. 

The loudest noise in the room was the tranquil heartbeat of a creature still in the womb, unknowing and unaware of the shared love it was nestled between.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. “Good morning” kiss

The pain was in every muscle, every ligament, every tendon. It was a pain that could best be described as something akin to the end of summer; bitter and sweet in the way it hurt every time you tried to move, or breathe, or fill your lungs with humid, sticky air.

The pain was good. Gil simply liked the pain leftover from the night before, no regrets or bleak sentiments or doubts about it.

He woke up on his side to see the dark-haired teenager laying beside him, facing the wall, still sound asleep. 

His hair was sticking out messily, probably from where Gil had held on too tightly for the majority of the night. It took a moment for him to see the countless, puffy violet scratches running down his back, over his shoulders, some so deep that the blood had dried into tiny little indigo crystals over the paleness of his skin.

So it really _had_ been that rough.

Gil looked up, watching the early morning light fill the room, flecks of dust swirling and tumbling in the luminescence. Shirts and jeans and socks were strewn all across the floor, over the bed, stuck against the mattress and the wall. A lamp lay knocked on the floor, forgotten. 

He rubbed at his face, stealing quick glances at Odin. 

Why did reckless, crazy decisions always seem more sane under the cover of night?

“H-Hey.”

Gil moved his neck to face the other boy. He was lying on his stomach, an arm wrapped over a pillow. 

Gil blinked, studying him curiously. At one point had Odin Arrow stopped being a stranger?

Oh, right.

It had been in the moment he pulled away from a kiss, whispering _exactly_ what he was going to do to him once he took his clothes off. 

“So l-last night,” Odin said, his muffled laugh smothered by the pillow, “w-was fucking wild.”

Gil bit his lip, darting his eyes away, trying not to match his own laughter. 

“I th-think everyone on the _planet_ knows m-my name now,” he added, turning over so he was on his side, facing him.

“If anything, everyone on the planet now knows what a filthy mouth you have,” Gil countered, feeling the heat of his face flush over his cheeks. 

They lay in silence for a few moments, taking slow, peaceful breaths.

“Are you sore?” Gil asked.

Odin nodded, eyes closed. 

“My whole body’s sore,” he continued. “I feel like a bruised peach.”

He saw the smile on Odin’s face.

“What?” he asked at the knowing look.

“You _do_ b-bruise like a summer peach. Your whole n-neck is c-covered in them.”

Gil reached up, trailing his fingers over his neck, across his collarbone. He lowered his head to look at his shoulder, only to see an indent of teeth marks.

“You bit me?”

Odin lifted his hand, letting the tips of his fingers brush over the bite, his own impermanent stamp he had left on the boy’s blue flesh.

“Y-Yeah,” he answered, dropping his hand back to his chest.

Gil watched as he closed his eyes, hands curled in front of his heart, the claw-marks on his shoulders strikingly obvious as they crisscrossed, overlapping, raw in their reminder of how desperate he had been in the dark, how he had scratched and clawed and begged at a boy who had been relentless in the act.

He realized that the only bedroom hymnal he had been singing in the dark was for the other boy to fuck him harder.

However, there had been something unusual in the unrelenting frenzy of last night’s lust.

He kept asking him to say his name.

“S-Say my name,” he had said between quick pants. “I want to h-hear you say it.”

In the morning light, the question brought him back from the memory.

“So does me saying your name get you off or something?”

Odin flashed his eyes up at Gil, unsuspecting of such a question.

“Y-Y-Yeah,” he murmured, ignoring the violet blush creeping over his face. He had hoped that it wouldn’t be brought up again, but, after such a chaotic rush of events that had unfolded, some questions were bound to be brought up once the blood had cooled.

Looking at him, Odin thought maybe he had seen everything in the other’s eyes, every color, every dark blue speck, every shimmer, every quick, nervous glance. 

The waters of those blue eyes were calm, but there was something so satisfying about riling up the waves, to get the tide moving and the blood flowing.

Gil turned over, propping up his elbow and resting his head in his hand. 

Since the day they had met, he felt that there was something unreadable about Odin, in the way he was always looking over his shoulder, always on edge that _something_ was lurking, just waiting to tear him apart. Anxious creatures, it seemed, never tend to do well if they are being followed.

He was, in all poised prose, a creature sauntering through the woods, stalking his prey with quiet patience, rogue and red with his calculating precision.

“Look at you,” Gil said, shaking his head, eyes half-closed. “Sometimes I’m not even sure you’re human.”

Odin cocked an eyebrow. “I’m n-not,” he reminded him.

“No, I know that. I know you’re like me, in some ways.”

Gil waved his hand, trying to find the answer. 

“We’re aliens of this weird universe. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about that look in your eyes when you want something.”

Odin tried to play ignorant as he stayed silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Odin,” he stated. “It’s scary. And frankly, pretty intimidating.”

He pointed a finger at him, tapping the tip of his nose briskly.

“Learn to be less intense all the time. Because you look like at any given moment you’re about to snap someone’s neck.”

Odin smiled. 

“You l-like it though. I can tell.”

Gil pursed his mouth, his skin darkening into a noticeable blue.

Odin continued as Gil lay there beside him, his heart quickening at the suggestive tone in his voice.

“You do it t-too,” he said, scooting closer. “All y-you have to do is show th-those pretty doe eyes, and you get whatever you want.”

Odin watched the flash of white hair in the sunlight as Gil closed his eyes, ducking down and wrapping his arms around his waist. He felt a hot, breathy kiss on the side of his neck. 

Odin snaked his arm behind him, pressing the palm of his hand against the nape of his neck, tilting his neck back and giving him a kiss on the lips, slow and unhurried. 

They both seemed to realize the millisecond the spark ignited again.

The kiss became two, then three, losing count as they meshed into each other, Gil digging his nails into the dip of Odin’s back as the dark-haired teenager grasped at the front of his boxers, running his fingers over the waistband. 

“Odin,” Gil breathed, pulling apart. He glowered at him sternly. “I’m still sore from last night.”

“I’ll be g-gentle this time,” he replied, moving until he was on top of him, squaring his arms around his head. “I’ll be r-real sweet. Cross my heart.”

Gil huffed out again as he nipped at his jaw.

“What time is it?”

Odin shook his head. “We’ve got t-time,” he grinned.

He kissed him fully on the mouth, breaking away with a loud smack of his lips.

“We’ve got all th-the time in the w-world.”

He pinned his hands to his sides, a shaky tremor to his arms as he looked down at the oceanic gaze of this boy. He could hear the creak and crack of his shoulders; a body worn-out and overworked but still finding the desire for warmth and touch and friction.

If the neighbors had not heard the commotion from last night, then they certainly were going to be aware of their names this morning.


	10. Chapter 10

There was a never-ending list of things they wanted to show each other.

The bright red wildflower growing beside the front porch of Odin’s house? Ava would adore that.

The dogs walking along the city sidewalk, wearing red and blue bandannas around their necks? Odin would have loved to see that.

It was in the way that May showers continued to downpour throughout the day, through the night, endless plops of fat raindrops cascading unto the roof and hitting the window. 

Odin wished she was with him to watch it.

Ava wished he was here with her to watch it too.

It just seemed to make more sense if they could listen to the rain together.

She liked taking pictures of the sky. 

Every morning, without fail, Ava Ire would tread softly into the art room, setting her book bag down and pulling out her phone. There was a sense of determination, of purpose in her movement as she propped a knee on the window ledge, leaning forward and snapping a picture of the sunrise.

Silently, she returned, taking out supplies and starting the day’s assignment.

Odin asked, of course, but not right away. He hoped she would tell him on her own time, as it seemed to be of great importance to her that every morning, the sky would be captured and saved. 

Eventually, he spoke up.

“Wh-Why do you t-take a picture of the sky every morning?”

The girl stopped in her tracks, calling out over her shoulder as she unlatched the window. 

“I’m recording the millisecond.”

He watched her as she steadied the phone in her small hands before taking the picture and returning to their table, sitting across from him as the morning bell rang, causing other students to drift into the art room.

“But wh-why? Is it f-for a scrapbook or something?” he inquired further. 

Ava tilted her head at him, looking up at the Monet’s and Picasso’s and Van Gogh’s covering the walls. Someone had stuck their used gum unto the Starry Night. 

Ava sighed softly before thumbing through the albums on her phone. She found it, then slid the phone across the table towards him. 

She answered him as he stared in awe at the screen.

“There is a different sunrise each morning. I just wanted to get that one millisecond, when the light and colors start to change.”

Odin scrolled through the album, laughing breathily at the warm reds and oranges and pinks and purples of the morning sunrise. Some days the clouds were scattered, or closely densed togther; or freckled, or stretched thin across the new sky. Some days were grey, overcast and bare. Yet, she still took the picture, regardless of the lack of magnificent light. 

“Ava, th-this-”

He paused, shaking his head. 

“This is a-ar-art.”

His friend seemed to perk up at the comment, sitting up straighter. 

“You think so?” she asked, idly reaching for the ends of her hair and combing her fingers through it.

“I kn-know so. This is incredible,” he answered her.

He snapped his fingers at the realization. 

“Wait! I have s-something to show you too.”

He dug through his book bag until pulling out his own phone, trying to find the album simply titled “A.”

He slid the phone towards the girl, watching her as she examined each and every picture. 

“You took all these?” she asked through a smile. There were pictures of wildflowers, black-eyed susans and blue bonnets and delicate violas covered in dew drops; pictures of rainwater gathered in a watering can, pictures of apples trees heavy with their red fruit. Her face lit up at a grainy picture of two rabbits, huddled close to each other, chewing grass on the Arrow’s front lawn.

“Y-Y-Yeah!” he mused, rushing through his words. “They’re j-just th-th-th-” he exhaled deeply, forcing himself to slow down. “They’re just things I th-thought you would like.”

Ava looked up, her eyes bright with joy at the realization of his words.

So he  _had_  been thinking about her as much as she had been thinking about him.

She looked back down at the phone’s screen, marveling at the very last picture. 

“This is beautiful, but I can’t tell what it is,” she spoke softly, turning the phone and trying to see the image from another angle. 

Odin leaned forward to see the watery outline of yellow and oranges, the shapes colliding and meshing into each other in wispy strands. 

“That’s a c-closeup of a campfire,” he explained. “From l-last weekend.”

Ava studied it before asking, “How does this remind you of me?”

The older boy leaned back in his chair, rubbing at his face with a quiet smile, peering at the art on the wall behind her. 

“The fire reminds m-me of y-your hair,” he answered, looking from her to the painting just above her head. 

Gustav Klimt’s  _The Kiss_  was always there, a golden crown of artwork adorning the girl across from him. 

Sometimes he found it difficult not to ignore everyone around them, to completely disregard fragile social norms and just reach across the table, cupping his hands around her face and bringing her into a kiss.

Ava blinked, her eyes fluttering. “Oh!” she chimed, gathering her hair over her shoulder and eyeing it meticulously. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but where was this fire he was talking about? Her hair was noticeably red, but these days, it had lost some of its shine and luster. 

Did he really not mind the fact that she was showing up to school in baggy clothes, long sleeves, and unbrushed hair? Or the fact that she became so quickly withdrawn or overwhelmed or sullen about things that everyone else seemed to handle with no difficulty?

Among the scatter of students, an upperclassman approached Odin, calmly stating, “Odin, you’ve got something on the back of your head.” He cocked his hand back, jerking at the air as if he were going to slap the imaginary nuisance from his head. 

Odin scrambled to cover his head, nearly toppling over in his seat as he cried out, “I’m s-s-sorry!” He tensed up, as if ready for some impact that was never going to happen in the first place, but as experience would have it, he had taught himself to fear the worst.

Ava watched, wide-eyed as the classroom went silent, turning to see what his outburst was about. 

The upperclassman peered at him in caustic withdrawal. 

“Dude, it was a joke. Calm down,” he scoffed.

Ava saw the tremor to his hands as her friend hid them under the table, grasping at his knees. He looked at her in distress, then at the other students, before standing up, nearly knocking over his chair. 

She spoke his name quietly as he retreated the dead silence of the art room, ignoring the teacher’s prodding questions as he stepped away with every intention of escape. 

“You really are perfect for each other.”

Ava shot the other student a look that she hoped would instill shame, or fear, into him. She stood and began walking away, hearing the collective whispers around her as he spoke out once more, “You act just like each other.”

“I wonder why,” she seethed, feeling the bitter resentment boil through her veins as she left the room in search of her friend.

He did this alot, hiding and pleading with some invisible force that no one would find him. She hid alot too, or escaped. There were alot of make-believe stories in her notebook about escaping school. The redhead had even devised a plan. She had shown it, jokingly of course, to Odin one time, receiving his advice that she would probably need more spoons for digging an escape tunnel underneath the girl’s locker room.

“You’ll be the hole digger. I’m the lookout.”

“ _I’m_ the hole d-digger? Ava, we c-can get some tiny spoons for you. We’re _both_ digging the escape t-tunnel.”

Ava paused in front of the boy’s bathroom down the hall. There was a possibility he was in there, but how could she be sure? She paced back and forth, taking a step forward then stopping herself. 

There was a cough from around the corner. 

The tiny girl tread forward cautiously as she poked her head around the wall. He was sitting on the ground, back against the wall, elbows resting on the tops of his knees. 

“H-Hey,” he said, turning and coughing into the crook of his elbow.

Ava stooped down to sit beside him. The sun was glowing a bright yellow through the window in front of them, framing the pair in its light. 

Perhaps he had chosen this spot because he could see the sun from here. 

“Are you okay?” she asked, nudging away a dead bug with the tip of her shoe.

He watched her, glad of the smile he felt while she pushed away the unfortunate insect. 

“I’m fine,” he remarked. “I got s-sc-scared is all.”

He concentrated on the graphite smudges on his hand. “I guess what he d-did reminded m-me of something.”

Ava nodded. 

The past had not been particularly kind to either of them; and it seemed, no matter what, it was always going to catch up in the most unsuspecting, painful ways. 

There was some hope in knowing that they had friends, and each other, who wouldn’t add to that difficult past. 

“I h-have an idea,” he offered, reaching out and brushing his knuckles over the softness of her sleeve. “Send me p-pictures of the sunrise every morning. I’ll s-send you pictures of the s-sunset every evening.”

“Okay,” she agreed, watching him as he absently traced his hand over her arm, delicately running the tips of his fingers over her wrist and down the palm of her hand. 

“Just letting you know, if you give me your snapchat name I will probably send you countless pictures throughout the day,” Ava said, feeling the tickle of his fingers barely touching her hand. “There’s alot of dogs in this town. I’m just not sure if I can take every single one’s picture.”

With a laugh, he drew away, coughing into his shoulder before replying, “That sounds l-like a good plan to me.”

After a few minutes, they walked back to the art room, taking slow, languid steps. He mentioned The Kiss, glad to see her excitement about sharing little facts and tidbits about the painting. 

The cough persisted between his words, echoing throughout the emptiness of the halls.

——————————-

The pictures were sent back and forth, freckled throughout the day.

There were chores to be done, assignments that demanded attention, siblings that required patience, and tasks that couldn’t be ignored. 

Still, there was always just a millisecond of time to send a picture.

He sent her flowers and stars and songs and brushes caked with paint.

She sent him doodles and blurry roadtrips and birds and the moon.

Of course, she sent him the sunrise, and he sent her the sunset.

The flowers and passages of books and shop signs were always nice. The real gift was receiving a picture of her face, hair braided, skin dotted with acne but a small smile playing on the corners of her mouth. 

He sent her a picture of him still half-asleep, stark black hair messy and unkempt, a sleepiness to his eyes. The flowers were beautiful, but she found the real endowment to be pictures of his face, tired and always mysteriously different with each passing day.

There was only one Ava Ire. There was only one Odin Arrow. And yet, remarkably, there was never a loss of fascination in the curve of her face, or the laugh lines near his eyes, or the gentle words and reassurance. 

Sometimes, the messages continued until nighttime, the clock ticking away into a new day. 

{We should go to sleep.}

[I know.]

{You go first.}

The rotation of the ceiling fan marked down the minutes. Time was passing painfully slow.

[You’re still awake aren’t you.]

{Yeah.}

[Go to sleep.]

{I will.}

{Goodnight Odin.}

[Goodnight Ava.]

The conversation started abruptly again, in the midst of the witching hour, where the world was very still. No one, it seemed, would care at this hour, if you were awake, unable to sleep. This was, after all, the hour that kept lonely hearts awake.

{I hate this.}

[Can’t sleep either huh?]

{No. Why can’t you?}

[I can’t stop coughing.]

{…That’s because you smoke…}

{Stop smoking.}

{You’re going to kill yourself.}

Minutes ticked by. The room seemed darker, a girl unsure if she had hurt her friend’s feelings, and a boy unsure of how to respond to such a truth.

[I’ll quit by graduation.]

There was nothing but void, endless black on black. 

{Good.}

[I’m leaving soon. For college.]

Those weren’t the words Ava hoped to see when her phone lit up beside her on the bed. 

{I know.}

The nighttime darkness was deafening. It would be different if she could hear his voice, if he could reach out and hold her by the waist. It would make all the difference if they were side by side on the bed. 

[There are still sunsets where I’m going.]

[And flowers.]

[And the stars.]

Go to sleep, she wanted to say. Go to sleep and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

But the witching hour was now and the ghosts were sneaky and it was difficult to pretend they hadn’t already made a home in the hollowness of her chest.

{I wish you were here.}

[Me too.]

[You always have a home here.]

{As an Arrow?}

[Yes.]

He sighed into the mattress, feeling the tiredness creak between his shoulders, behind his eyes, beneath his ribs. 

It would make more sense, he decided, if she was sleeping beside him. Campfires on summer nights were shrewd in comparison to her warmth, lacking in vibrancy to her color, laughable in the way Ava Ire sustained and burned and hummed with pyre.

Cigarette smoke was such a weak quick-fix compared to her.

{Go to sleep.}

[I will. You go to sleep too.]

[Don’t become a ghost Ava.]

[I still have things to show you.]

The tiny girl reached across her bed, turning on the lamp resting on the nightstand. She settled herself, taking an uncoordinated picture of her face, as darkened and unsettling as her eyes were, as worrying as the cut on her shoulder was. 

{Goodnight Odin.}

He breathed easier at the sight of red and amber, in all its crimsons and scarlets, as unsteady as her hands were, he could still see his friend. 

There was no other light to be found but the view of the moon from his bedroom window. 

She only had seconds to see that sliver of moon in the black sky.

[Goodnight Ava.]

The natural state of the universe was constant darkness, unending nighttime. 

The sunrises and sunsets were just reminders that the Earth will always, no matter what, move towards the light.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> marlboro graveyard

He had never felt the sky until now.

Gil looked from the huge mass of grey clouds threatening to give way to rain at any moment, to the playground surrounding him and the scrawny teenager sitting on the tire swing.

It creaked its rustic melody, back and forth, as Odin rocked on the heels of his shoes.

Gil felt like he should hear angels descend when the sun broke through the clouds. It was strange, to be sunny and cloudy at the same time.

“L-Look at that,” Odin mumbled, the cigarette dangling off the edge of his mouth. He brought his fingers around it, exhaling into the air before continuing, “It’s h-heavenly, isn’t it?”

Gil gave him an incredulous look, cocking his brow and crossing his arms.

“This is dumb,” he declared, steeping unto the mulch and feeling his weight sink into the ground. “I don’t like doing this.”

“S-Sitting on a playground?” Odin questioned, kicking back and crouching atop the tire swing. He nearly slipped, gasping and grabbing unto the metal chain before falling. He flickered his eyes at Gil, then regained his composure, taking the cigarette from his mouth and flicking it into the mulch. 

“No, what we’re sitting on a playground _waiting_ for,” Gil huffed, arms crossed. 

He went quiet this time. In the midst of his silence, Odin had pulled his lighter from his pocket. He was mesmerized by the flame his lighter had created. It was always difficult to take his sight away from the fire, as it called to him and calmed him and kissed his skin.

He sucked in a sharp breath when it burned his hand, causing him to let go, the lighter tumbling to the soft mulch.

Gil rolled his eyes, even if he did feel a pang of sympathy for the other boy. He reached down, picking up the lighter and handing it back to Odin, who was sucking at the new burn on his finger.

“I don’t like waiting for your drug dealer,” Gil spoke. He decidedly shoved his hands in his jacket’s pockets, shivering against the breeze. The sun had disappeared for now, but with this bizarre constantly changing sky, it would surely show itself again. 

“Wow, when you p-put it like that, it does s-sound bad,” Odin answered. He twirled the lighter between his fingers, then stopped, pointing at Gil. “Don’t call him my d-drug dealer.”

“Then what do you call a guy who sells you pot?” Gil snapped. He tapped his shoe against a mushroom hidden in the grass, gentle enough that the raindrops shook free from it.

“Uh, I don’t kn-know,” Odin said, watching him tap the mushroom. The tire swing had a wonderful rhythm to it. He could stay here for hours, he decided. There was no better place to be than a deserted playground on a day like this. Odin looked to the sky, and saw the mass of tiny birds above them fly from one tree to the next in a swarm. He was going to point this out to Gil when a car slowly rolled up beside the playground. 

The man in the car did not exit, only rolled down his window, waving at Odin to come to him.

The teenager stood from the tire swing and walked towards him. He slouched with his hands in his pockets, but made sure to step over the mushroom as he made his way to the car.

Gil counted the number of times the tire swing creaked, but the cries sounded too ominous this time, like angel windchimes under the cover of bird filled-skies.

Gil stepped from side to side, watching Odin and the man speak, the dark haired teenager with his crossed arms over the windowsill. Gil watched him, and studied him, like countless times before. It hurt to see him this way, the lost sleepless nights still engraved under his eyes, the heaviness to his shoulders when he laid his head to rest against a wall. How he couldn’t walk down the street without constantly looking above and behind and around him.

How he talked about Death like it was a joke.

The old, dilapidated childless playground whined and moaned and whispered. Gil stood still, listening.

It was a quick exchange. Gil saw Odin hand the man a few green bils, in exchange for a small plastic bag containing its own dark distinct green.

With that, the boy stuffed the baggie in his pocket, looking from side to side as the car drove away without another reason to stay.

Odin walked back to Gil, proudly letting himself step over the embankment with a short drop.

“I guess we’re done here,” Gil announced. He joined by Odin’s side as they began making their way to the sidewalk. Odin’s car was parked a few blocks from here, as he wanted the playground to appear seemingly empty for the entire encounter. 

“Hmhm,” Odin hummed. He shivered once against the cold, then looked behind him, eyeing the old tire swing, then to the sky. 

The sun finally shone through and with it, Gil looked to the sky too. The roads were empty, save for the car in the distance driving closer and closer.

Gil peered at it momentarily, not taking much notice until he realized who was in the car. He saw the face of his classmate Gev, and before Gil gave him the chance to recognize him, he hissed, “ _Hold my hand_.”

Odin fumbled through his words, a concoction of “Wh-What the fuck” and before he could protest, Gil snaked his fingers inbetween Odin’s, the pair of them continuing their walk down the sidewalk.

Gil’s face burned as the car rolled by. Did he see? Did he notice?

The ruse must have worked, for he heard Gev’s car roll by slowly at first, and then speed up, driving along past them without any indication that Gev had noticed them.

When the car came to a stop sign, it turned left, leaving the two of them to take their own right to Odin’s parked car.

They were still holding hands when Odin asked, “Okay, so what w-was that about?”

Gil sighed, kicking at an acorn on the ground. It skidded and bounced ahead of them, and Odin crushed it with his foot, not taking his eyes off Gil. It was almost scrutinizing, the way his eyes refused to leave Gil’s face.

“Nothing. That’s someone in one of my classes at the community college. We talked for a little bit, but it’s nothing.”

Odin drew in a deep breath, his eyes going obscenely wide before saying, “I’m not s-s-stupid.” He sneered at some invisible entity beside him, at how weak the effort had been to even speak. “You’re t-trying to make him jealous.”

Gil jerked, taken aback. They stood at the front of Odin’s car, Gil speaking quickly in his defense.

“No, I’m just making a point to let him know I’m not interested.”

Odin smirked at the ground, then said, “Then wh-why are we still holding hands?”

Gil instantly let go, causing Odin’s hand to drop to his side. The birds above had a pretty good show of his embarrassment, he believed.

Odin shrugged and stepped over the driver’s side, rubbing at the back of his neck, but not before calling out to Gil over the top of the car.

“You like m-making people jealous?” 

Gil scoffed. The heat underneath his skin was almost unbearable.

“ _No_ , I was just letting him know-”

“Th-That you like making people j-jealous.”

Gil got into the passenger side of the car, slamming the door shut and ignoring the coy way Odin took his own seat in the driver seat. He said nothing, only turned on the ignition, tuned the radio up a few notches, and rolled down his window.

Gil knew, no, he had _learned_ , that Odin smoked whenever he was nervous, which happened to be most of the waking day (or night. Tonight would be the first time he spent the night over at the Arrow’s house, but he had a feeling Odin was one to have a restless night’s sleep that equally matched his restless days).

It was only habit that led him to bring the cigarette from behind his ear and light it, inhaling deeply and exhaling the smoke out the window.

The smoke lingered the rest of the car ride as they drove back to Odin’s house.

The sky had opened, and the sunset was drawing closer, leaving tiny tendrils of pink to curl along the horizon. Maybe Odin had been right, Gil thought. It was heavenly. It had been a good, if not uneventful day.

“Oh sh-shit, Gil, why didn’t you remind me about Ava?”

He was drawn from his earthly daydream, then grabbed hold of the door handle when Odin slammed his brakes, doing a dramatic three point road turn, heading back towards town.

Gil took a deep breath, then rested his head in his hand.

“I didn’t know she was coming,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.

“Y-Yeah. I forgot to t-tell you, but I’m surprising her.”

Gil nodded, brow raised and mouth pursed. There wasn’t much he felt like should be said. The music filled the silence. The evening light, as it settled sleepily over the dimming sky, was beautiful in the car.

He didn’t like admitting it, even to himself. He wished it would have just been him and Odin. He wished the light would just be their’s, alone in the car, for just a little while. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, but nerves kept him quiet.

Odin pulled to the side of Ava’s house, a standard, matching white two-story in the suburbs. He left the engine running, but before stepping out, held Gil at his arm, speaking quietly.

“Listen, don’t s-say anything about her arms.”

Gil drew back, quickly eyeing the house, then back to Odin. He knew Ava, at least partially. He had met her once, and although she was incredibly soft-spoken, he had only taken notice of her crimson red hair and quiet demeanor.

Before Gil could ask, Odin added, “Th-There’s some new-” he ran his finger down his arm, “-cuts. It’s cold out but if she t-takes off her jacket, p-please don’t say anything.”

Gil swallowed, then offered a gentle smile at the other boy. Odin shoved at his shoulder, saying, “Thanks” before leaving the car.

Gil watched as he walked to the door. There was something different in his stride, something more bouncy and confident. Gil lowered himself further into his seat, as far as he could. It was a small car. It was a wonder either of them could fit, let alone three people.

Odin knocked twice at the door, then waited. When there was no answer, he spun on his heel to look at Gil. When the door opened, a flood of warm yellow light filled the air, contrasting with the dark blue outside. Gil watched to see Ava, in all her short, small stature, rub at her face, a tired sort of slouch to her as she began talking with the taller boy.

He didn’t want to admit it. The bitterness prickled uncomfortably beneath his skin at the way Odin spoke with her. He jutted his thumb to the car, with Gil still in it, and then shoved his hands in his pockets. His head would halt at each and every stutter, his eyes blinking rapidly with the effort. Ava leaned against the door in a massive sweater, arms crossed, but the smile playing on her lips alight with joy at seeing him at her doorstep.

Gil fought the urge to honk the horn after watching them talk for a few minutes.

Instead, Ava splayed her hand out in front of her, nodding, then disappeared back inside, shutting the door weakly behind her. Odin reached out, holding the door open, his body caught inbetween the doorway. He wiped at the smile begging to come across his mouth.

The girl appeared again, this time with her shoes on and a bookbag thrown over her shoulders. Odin closed the door behind her, and together they walked back to the car.

Gil began looking through the tapes Odin had kept stashed in his car’s dash. It was with little interest. He heard Odin open the door for her, and Ava climbed in the back, scooting her bookbag beside her.

The door shut, and in the sudden darkness, she said, “Hey Gil.”

The older boy turned his neck, saying, “Hello.” He didn’t know if this was a fair enough greeting, but before he could turn back to face the sky ahead, Odin opened the driver’s side door, causing the overhead light to flood the space between them.

Gil tried to keep his eyes dull and uninterested. The light reflected on the younger girl’s face, illuminating her crimson hair first, then the big brown eyes that matched her round face, and then the flash of two large red cuts across the flesh of her neck.

He was glad when Odin took his place at the driver’s seat, cranking up the radio and turning to Ava as the guitar reached its shrill solo.

“You’re good t-to go?” he spoke over the music, placing a hand on her knee and shaking it once. 

Ava laughed, nodding.

“Alright,” he said through his grin. He turned, putting the car in drive. Louder, he yelled, “You l-like this song, right?”

The redhead, barely above the music, yelled back, “Yeah! We heard it that one time, at the county fair?”

“Yeah, that’s r-right,” Odin said, a tone of admonishment in his voice. “I th-threw up there.”

Gil could hear her choke out a laugh, then speak up once more above the radio.

“You know, I almost forgot about that part. Thanks.”

Odin turned back unto the main road, switching the headlights on his car, settling into the seat.

“It was s-so momentous. I have to bring it up,” he said. 

Ava scooted forward in her seat, tucking her seatbelt under her arm to ask, “Gil, have you heard this song?”

“No,” he answered. He cleared his throat. “I haven’t.”

“W-Well, it’s about time,” Odin interjected, turning the stereo up. He turned onto a gravel road shaded by trees. In the cover of dark, Gil watched as Odin drummed his hands against the steering wheel. Gil smiled at his enthusiasm, as short lived as it was. Odin reached for Gil’s hand, holding it and raising it in the air dramatically, but he didn’t let go when he lowered their entwined hands. 

Gil’s heart drummed frantically, even if he told himself there was nothing to be nervous about. It was the touch of his hand that made it better. In the dark there were no excuses to be made. Without thinking, Gil leaned forward, kissing Odin on the cheek briskly before quickly moving back.

Odin jerked his head to look at him, then back to the road.

“ _Now_ y-you’re getting into it,” he shouted, and he laughed, and Gil joined his laughter. Odin pulled to the side of the gravel, parking just on the edge of grass and putting the car into park. He didn’t bother to turn the music off when the rickety car was finally turned off. 

As Gil followed them into the house, he kept his eyes to the sky. It was black now, but there was the trace of light just beyond, a sliver of sunlight creeping over the tops of the pine trees surrounding the Arrow’s home.

He looked to that, but was far more mesmerized by the moon above him.

————————

“Gil, you h- _have_ to stay s-still.”

The older boy complied, balling his fists by his sides and squeezing his eyes shut. He wasn’t sure why he had agreed to be poked with an inked needle like this. Maybe it was because Ava already had one, given to her by Odin. It was her zodiac sign, the Gemini symbol, right at the point where her arm met her chest. She had talked fondly of how Odin had poked the tattoo on her, and as small and easily covered as it was, Ava regarded the tattoo as the first time she had trusted someone enough to see her bare shoulders.

Now, he found himself in the same predicament.

Over the course of the hour, Odin had changed his position from kneeling beside Gil to actually straddling him to the floor of his bedroom. Ava laughed at the two of them, watching from her spot on the bed as Odin repeated himself, “St-Stop squirming, you’re gonna m-mess it up.”

Gil blurted out, feeling the sharp prick of the needle dig into his ribs once more, “I am _trying_. You do realize how much this hurts, right?”

Odin just shook his head, lost in concentration as he carefully dipped more ink onto the needle’s tip.

“It’s t-temporary pain,” he mumbled. “Just remember it w-won’t last forever.”

“The tattoo?” Gil asked, staring with wide eyes into the ceiling. He sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the repetitive pain once more poke his skin.

“Dude, no, this tattoo is p-pretty permanent,” Odin answered.

Odin paused, then looked at Ava. He made a face of bewilderment then said to Gil, “You kn-knew that, r-r-right? This is permanent.”

Gil drew a deep breath.

“Yes, I know it’s permanent. Continue.”

Odin and Ava shared a laugh, although it was uneasy.

After a few seconds of silence, Gil spoke up once more.

“You don’t have to sit on top of me. Not that you’re crushing me. You just don’t have to sit on me.”

Odin’s hair fell over his eyes as he continued working, his body hovering hunched atop Gil’s.

“Nope,” he stated. “Y-You’ll keep squirming. You’ll f-fuck it up.”

The door of his bedroom opened, revealing Odin’s little sister Raven as she poked her head around the frame.

“Odin, where are your weird friends sleeping?” she asked. She acknowledged Ava with an excited wave. The redhead returned her wave, but was careful to pull her hair over her neck, shielding her cuts from view.

“Ava’s sleeping in m-my bed. Me and Gil are on the c-couch,” he answered, his voice low and distant. Raven noticed the tattoo he was working on, causing her to step in closer, asking, “O _oo_ , what are you getting?”

Odin didn’t answer, so Gil tilted his head to face her, saying, “It’s a fish.”

Raven crept closer, hovering over her brother’s shoulder.

The fish was nearly complete, as simple as its design was.

“I’m next,” she announced.

Odin slowly turned, eyeing her with an incredulous look and an equally sarcastic bite.

“No you’re n-not.”

“Says who?” she shot back. “Olai wouldn’t even notice, and I won’t tell anyone.”

“P-P-Please,” Odin retaliated, dipping more ink onto the needle. “You’d tell everyone at s-school, and they’d call, and the next thing you know, you’d get t-taken away because of how crazy our f-family is.”

Raven snorted, her hands grasping for her knees. She leaned forward, laughing, then said, “Please Odin. Just a cat. Or a cat paw.”

“No,” he stated with finality. 

“Would you give Magpie one?” she asked, reaching out and pulling at a tuft of his black hair. 

“ _No_ ,” he sighed, swatting away her hand. 

“Fine.” Raven stood, moving away and to the door. “Just don’t ask me for anything ever.” With that, she slammed the door in a short burst. 

Odin raised himself up, cracking his back, then turned to Ava, asking, “What would you g-give that?”

She lifted herself up on her hand, her elbow digging into the bed.

“I’d say a 5 out of 10. C’mon Odin, you know it could be worse.”

He raised his brow, then returned to working on the tattoo.

Gil took a deep breath, pretending that the other boy wasn’t on top of him, that he wasn’t so close to his hips. He pretended he had smoked the pot with Ava and Odin. He hadn’t, but now in the stillness of his bedroom, he wished he had sucked it up, had swallowed whatever uncertainty was there and smoked, just as he had kissed Odin in the car.

“Do you have one?” he asked Odin, meeting his dark gaze. “A tattoo?”

The other boy looked away, and his skin darkened at his ears.

“Y-Yeah,” he replied. 

Gil looked around, waiting for an answer. His curiosity wasn’t sated with a simple “yeah”, so he asked again.

“What is it?”

Odin looked to Ava, who simply stared blankly at him.

“It’s my st-star sign. For Scorpio,” he told him. 

Before Gil opened his mouth, Odin interrupted, “It’s in a w-weird spot. But I th-thought it made sense, at the t-time.”

Ava giggled, to which Gil looked from her, then back to Odin. The other boy stood, saying, “It’s done. Go l-look at it in the bathroom.”

Gil stood, questions still buzzing in his mind as he walked from the room into the bathroom down the hall.

He turned on the light then stood at the mirror, lifting his shirt gently to see the black smudged ink etched into his skin. It was good, he realized. The design flowed like water, light and delicate, a fish caught in the tide. Despite its smallness, Odin had made sure to put plenty of attention into its detail.

Gil looked at the stick n’ poke first, then his own face, from his blue eyes to white hair and dark skin, then altogether, completely taking in the view of his entire self with this new addition to his body.

He hoped it was enough. It sunk deep into his gut, this ache in his chest. He hated repeating it, but he hoped it was enough to be a part of their little group.

Gil tread softly from the bathroom back to Odin’s room, but stopped when he heard the whispers being exchanged back and forth.

“Do you like him?”

The voice was small and feminine, a sort of sing-song way about her in each and every syllable. Gil stood as still as possible, keeping his eyes away from the light.

“Y-Yes, but-”

He didn’t know if he should walk in or not. Were they talking about him?

He begged of it, and hoped they were.

When they stopped whispering, Gil entered the room, taking nonchalant steps towards his own bookbag resting against the wall.

His face burned bright red at seeing the two of them, lost in thought.

Ava was sitting on the ground, her legs outstretched in front of her. Odin was lying on his side with his head in her lap. He asked aloud, “Do you s-see any?”

Ava clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her fingers brushing through his black hair in all directions, nails digging along his scalp.

She looked up at Gil, offering a tiny smile, then said to him, “Odin has ticks.”

“I do n-not!” he argued, “This is j-just a precaution.”

Ava said once more, “Odin _thinks_ he has ticks.”

Gil searched through his bag, pulling out his toothbrush.

“You could’ve asked me to look,” Gil stated solemnly. “We were together all day.”

Odin shifted, wrapping his arms around Ava’s legs, closing his eyes with a sigh as she scratched at his head.

“It’s g-gr-gross, Gil. I spared you this w-way.”

Ava pulled her hands away, poking him on the eyelid.

“So it’s okay if I do the gross stuff?”

Odin smiled, then groaned, covering his face with his hand.

“S-Sorry if you find any,” he told her.

The girl just shook her head at Gil, who was already retreating back to the bathroom.

He heard her admonish one more time, “Maybe if you stopped going in the woods all the time, this wouldn’t happen…”

——————-

The house was cold at night, this much he had learned in the darkness.

Even if Odin was just on the other end of the couch, it did little to offer any warmth. His bare ankles pressed against Gil’s wrist were just as cold as the frigidness around them.

The difference was, one boy was accustomed to the cold better than the other.

Gil drifted in and out of sleep several times that night. At times he would dream, but they were scattered and disoriented, and just as Gil had predicted, he would wake to find Odin talking restlessly in his sleep, or he would go rigid, then relax, only to once more fight off something in his dream, lashing out with a kick of his leg.

Gil wondered if anyone had told him he did this. He wondered if Ava told him he did this. He wondered if Ava knew.

At one point, Gil woke to see the trace of blue dawn lighten the sky. It drifted through the window, settling like water in the living room. It must have been a dream, Gil imagined. It must have been, to be awake before anyone else, to witness the very first inkling of sunrise and to be sharing the couch with someone who could, seamlessly, break and rebuild his heart all at once.

Gil didn’t know how long he had been awake. He listened as the grandfather clock in the foyer chimed six times. Before it could rest, Odin lifted himself up, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hands.

“He lives,” Gil said, keeping his voice quiet. 

Through the chime of the clock, Odin glared at him through tired eyes, but didn’t rest his head back down. He simply sat there, so still and unmoving that Gil could watch his body rock just a fraction of a second with the beat of his heart.

“I h-hate mornings,” he finally announced, before plopping back down on his pillow.

Gil stared up at the ceiling. The wooden rafters seem to get closer and closer unless he blinked against them.

He didn’t want to say it out loud. This house gave him chills, not just from the late autumn cold curling itself through the walls.

“Odin,” he spoke up. “Where’s that tattoo you were talking about yesterday?”

The other boy stretched his legs, cracking his toes with a pop. Gil hoped the question wasn’t too bold, but he had to know.

“You kn-know how Pisces rules the f-feet, right?”

Gil replied with a short “yeah.”

Odin covered his face with one hand. Gil scooted further into the couch to see the point of his elbow stick out awkwardly from the rest of him.

“I’m so s-stupid,” he said. “Don’t r-repeat that. Come here.”

Gil lifted himself off from the couch, pressing his palms into the cushion and then slouching forward. Odin laid with his back to the couch, refusing to look away from the ceiling as he lifted his shirt up, simultaneously inching his jeans further down his hips.

“I thought it’d be s-so cool,” Odin said, his face in a disgusted grimace. “To put the S-Scorpio symbol h-h-here.”

Gil first saw the scar on his side, pale smooth flesh indented into him. His eyes trailed from this to the hair trailing his stomach, then finally he saw the tattoo, right at the corner of his hip. It was placed so low that Gil felt embarrassed to be seeing it, but forced himself to remain calm at it.

“It looks great,” he said, hoping the sleeplessness would cause him to calm down.

Odin pursed his lips, his thumbs still caught in the loops of his jeans.

“Not r-really,” he admitted.

“So why’s it in that spot?” Gil asked. 

In that instant, the blush dusting Odin’s cheeks couldn’t be excused. He looked to the side, a timid sort of smile stretching across his mouth as he mumbled, “Do you kn-know what Scorpio rules?”

Gil began to shake his head, the confusion clear on his face until he met Odin’s eyes. The pieces seemed to click, and then Gil was nodding, his own blush burning just as equally as the other boy’s.

“Okay,” he said. 

Odin nodded too.

“Okay,” he mirrored. 

Gil blamed the sleeplessness. He blamed their shared “okay”, because in the next instant, he had dipped his face to Odin’s hip, kissing the bone carefully before kissing the stick n’ poke tattoo.

He realized it must have sparked something inside them both, for Odin reached out, grasping Gil by the back of the head to pull him into a kiss.

The kiss lasted a long time, he realized. He didn’t know it would be this soft, or that his skin would be this warm, or that the sun coming over the living room window would bathe them in such a golden iridescence.

He didn’t realize when the kiss had ignited either, because then both of them were scrambling for each other, pulling and tugging at each other’s clothes, Odin’s hands entangled in Gil’s, Gil’s own hands cupping Odin’s neck. He leaned in closer so he was straddling the dark haired boy, planting each and every kiss along his jaw and his neck, feeling the brush of his eyelashes against his cheek. Odin grabbed at Gil’s hips, grinding his body into his.

A moan escaped Gil’s mouth, and Odin stopped, pressing his hand over his mouth.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t w-wake up my f-family.”

They were panting. Gil felt a wet sheen of sweat already condensing on his back, both from nerves and from where Odin had raked his nails.

Gil was shaking, his elbows threatening to give way as he spoke quietly.

“I don’t think we can do this now. It’s not a good time.”

Odin pulled him closer at the hem of his jeans, kissing him at the neck before breathing aloud in a hushed voice.

“No. But I have s-something to show you.”

They took a minute to regain their composure. It was on Odin’s insistence that Gil needed to see something outside, something in the backyard.

He kept kissing him. It couldn’t be helped. Gil didn’t know how many kisses the other boy had saved for him, but there was plenty to be had, all sickly sweet and dripping with the scent of last night’s marijuana.

In the early morning light, they stepped outside through the screen door in the kitchen. Already, Odin pulled the cigarette from over his ear, placing it in his mouth and flickering his lighter’s flame over top of it. Its orange glow crackled and glowed against the blue dawn, and Gil wished he could save this moment forever, the smell of tobacco and the chill of the air and the cold dew on the lawn surrounding them.

Odin pointed at the woods, letting his hand roam across the vision of the acres of land belonging to the Arrows.

“S-Sit down,” he said, and they did. 

Odin exhaled the smoke away from Gil before continuing.

“It’s beautiful out h-here in the mornings. I hate w-waking up, but it’s peaceful like this.”

He drew in another deep breath of the cigarette. Gil couldn’t believe he had just kissed those lips so fervently just minutes ago, but the raw redness where he had bit into his lip was still evident. He turned away, pulling at a weed beside the porch steps. To the side of the steps, he saw an ashtray, nearly overflowing with cigarette butts, all snuffed out, all used and cold and withered. Their purpose had been fulfilled. Odin had talked about his “lucky red’s”, and when Gil had asked what this meant, the other boy said they were Marlboro’s, tried and true.

“Look,” Odin pointed out. “Over th-there.”

Gil looked up. In the distance, a herd of deer had emerged from the forest. They watched them take hesitant steps before stepping into the field to graze. They could flee at any second, it seemed. The slightest sound would wake them from their trance.

“They’re beautiful,” Gil whispered, barely audible. 

Odin nodded, but he too didn’t move.

As the deer continued their search for lush grass, Odin turned to Gil, resting his head against his knees.

“Don’t use m-me,” he said. 

Gil blinked, then nodded. He didn’t want to move. The deer were so beautiful, and he knew their beauty wouldn’t last forever.

“Don’t use me to m-make people j-jealous.”

Odin took a drag of the cigarette, then handed it to Gil. Their fingers brushed against each other, cold and shaking.

In the blue morning, the cigarette was the only glowing warmth in their world. Gil inhaled the smoke, fighting the urge to cough, but letting his tongue roam over where Odin’s mouth had been.

He didn’t look away this time when he kissed the bony knuckles of his hand.

“I won’t. I promise.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

She was forcing herself to stay. She repeated to herself that his family would have to come for him eventually, even if that thought felt weak and unconvincing.

Ava looked up at the clock, frowning at the time. 

It was very, very likely they wouldn’t come for him.

Hospitals worried her. The smell, and the crowd, and the bustle of patients and nurses put her on edge. Even with the curtain drawn in this room, she could still see the passing shadows of feet move by. There was no rest. She sat by the bed, anxiously bobbing her crossed leg, her fingertips trailing down the shoebox laying on her lap. 

Every few minutes she lifted the lid to peek inside, and then she shut it, checking the clock. 

3:23 am. She shivered.

No one was coming for him.

As much as she had tried to avoid her eyes from looking, at 3:24 am, Ava finally told herself to calm down, stop shivering, stop thinking about running away, and just look. She did so, and after a few moments, she balanced her head on her closed fist, and watched him.

Odin was breathing slowly, eyes closed. He seemed at peace. She trailed her eyes over his face, at the tuft of black hair sticking out oddly from the pillow, and then at his hand. The tubes attached to him strung out like fairy lights. Ava eyed the drawn curtain. When she was certain no one was going to intrude, she picked up her chair by the arms and scooted herself closer, careful enough to not wake him. 

Settling herself in for the expectant dark morning, Ava pried open the box, only lifting one edge to pull out a note.

It was written on journal paper, crinkled on one edge. The hand writing was recognizable, but shaky.

> _I know you’re scared. I get scared sometimes too. It’s easy to think the worst is going to happen. It’s easy to come up with the ending. I just want you to know, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere._

Ava bit the inside of her cheek. She read the note once, then twice, then placed it back in the box. It was a gentle reminder Odin had written after a fight between them. On what, she couldn’t remember. She did remember what she had told him, however. 

_‘I make mistakes, and then people leave. It happens all the time, and I was scared of when the next time would be, and I didn’t want you to be ‘the next time.’. I’m prepared for the next time though.’_

The next morning after she had said that, she found his handwritten note underneath a cup of coffee waiting for her.

In the clean white of the hospital, she looked at the tubes once more, and at the IV’s. She was lost in thought when she heard a voice, hoarse and quiet, speak up.

“H-Hey.”

Ava startled, blinking quickly as her eyes met his. 

Odin lifted his hand, rotating his wrist to look at the tubes. 

“How l-long was I out?” he asked. His eyes flickered to the clock above her head, but he only looked away in confusion.

“About two hours, I guess.”

She seemed to sink further in her seat, her hold on the shoebox tightening.

“They put you on morphine. It wasn’t very pretty.”

He stared blankly, then looked up at the IV bag. 

“Is it s-still in me?” he questioned, although they could both see it, a steady drop being fed through the clear tube.

Ava nodded, producing a low humming noise from her throat. 

He let his hand fall back to the bed, sighing.

“Please, p- _please_ tell me I didn’t piss myself.”

He looked at her, the smile slowly spreading across his face when she laughed.

“No, I don’t think so,” she answered, hiding her grin with her hand. “But it did knock you out pretty quick.” She went quiet, looking at the shoebox sitting warmly on her lap.

“You’re not in pain anymore, are you? I mean, does it hurt right now?”

She looked up, her eyes softening around the edges. Still drugged and dazed, Odin rubbed his face against the pillow, stretching out his ankles as he shook his head. 

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. 

She wasn’t sure what to say. The journey from the apartment to the hospital echoed like a lost memory now. He didn’t remember the doctor walking in the room with their clipboard. She did, and she remembered what he had told her. The pain was temporary. He had endured the worst of it.

Now, Ava heard the hospital bed creak as he moved over, asking her if she would lay beside him. 

She did. Placing the shoebox on her chair, she took off her shoes, then carefully crawled onto the bed. She wondered what would happen in this very instant if the lights were shut off, if the hospital were evacuated, and not a living soul would remain but two. 

Together, they lay on the twin sized bed, listening to the sounds of the hospital continue behind that one lone curtain.

“What does it feel like?” she asked him. “The morphine I mean. You seem really out of it.”

“How c-can you tell?” 

Ava placed her palm on the place where the tubes dug under his skin.

“Your eyes are all over the place. You look like you’re about to start dreaming any second now,” she stated. “Seems pretty serene, from where I’m at.”

Odin had to move his arm around her shoulder to show her. The colors of his skin had bruised into a subtle purple, yellowing where one needle had poked the soft skin of his arm.

“You want to t-try it?” 

Ava turned to look at him, their noses nearly brushing against each other. She squinted, saying, “You really are out of it. Go back to sleep.”

Without warning, he calmly pinched the needle in his arm, then pulled it out from his skin, holding it straight in the air. Ava drew in a deep breath, hissing, “What are you _doing_?” She looked to the curtain, expecting a nurse to come in at any moment, but found they were still alone.

Odin held it out, the two of them watching its point glisten in the light. 

Ava sighed, mostly to show her disappointment, but in the next instant she took it, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. 

She wasn’t afraid of needles. She was, however, afraid of being caught. She was afraid of Odin getting kicked out, when he needed to be here.

She looked to the ceiling, then mumbled, “Do it for me.”

Odin shifted in the bed, his right arm still stuck between her and the mattress. He took the needle in his left hand, holding it out from them as the girl laid out her arm. 

He was careful about it, taking his time as he leaned in to find her vein. He didn’t say anything about her lack of nervousness when he pinched her skin, or the quietness between them as he poked the needle in, breaking her skin, and then slowly pushing the shared needle into her vein.

They both seemed to wait for a reaction. After a few seconds, Ava took a deep breath, and then closed her eyes, and laid with her head on the bed. 

He kissed her on the temple, then whispered, “Wh-What’s in the size 5 sh-shoe box?”

Ava shook her head, her breathing become slower and slower, her heart settling into a sleepy rhythm. 

“Before we left the apartment and came here, I put,” she smiled, then laughed, so quiet that his gaze flickered back to her. “Everything. Everything in it. I put our money in it, and a toothbrush. It might be mine. I don’t know. Toothpaste, and nail polish, for some reason. Socks, but they don’t match. I put the dried flower petals in there. Your ring is in there too. A few notes. A story book. I was going to tell you a story.”

Her voice carried off on its own wistful dreaminess. They pressed their heads together. 

“You really scared me, you know,” she sighed. “Next time you better tell me if you’re hurting.”

He laughed, pressing his nose in her hair.

“N-Next time?” he questioned. He realized she was falling asleep now, drifting off into another time and place that he could only wonder about. Where she was going, how long she was going to be there. If she would ever return.

She scratched at her nose, saying, “There’s always a next time. I’m prepared for a next time.”

Odin went quiet. He looked to the clock, but decided the time wasn’t important.

The sun would rise soon. They just wouldn’t be awake to see it.

“Wh-What stories did you have?” he asked. 

He didn’t expect her to answer, but softly she replied, “It was something very sad. A man goes into the woods, but never comes back. A dream about getting lost. I think you would have liked it.”

He closed his eyes. She was breathing slowly now, the soma of this dream darkening around the edges, speaking softly. It was telling a story, as long as she listened intently enough.

It would be hours before either of them woke, and by then, the dream would have been forgotten. 


	13. Chapter 13

It was happening slowly, and then all at once, so fast that she couldn’t remember the reason for why he was doing it.

Odin pulled away, lifting himself on his knees, the bed creaking under their weight. Ava watched as he reached behind him to pull his shirt over his head, her head tilting as she realized how slow it was happening once more, how dreamy it was. The ring worn around his neck was now caught in his shirt.

Her hand curled around his shirt, even as it was being freed from his body, because she wanted to find the ring. It was still there. It was just hard to see, as if the smoke in the bedroom could wrap it up, and take it away, and then he wouldn’t get to pull it over his head, and lay it carefully on the bedside table. However, she did watch him do this. The ring lay there, glittering and admired. Its color was there for a moment, but she could still see it when they kissed again, their hands pressing firmly against each other’s bodies, the smoke in their breath being exchanged, over and over, like a house on fire whose doors refused to budge, their own bodies refusing to break apart as the flames licked and curled and ate its way through the home.

And then it seemed, as if it had been happening already, for the longest time, his mouth was at her neck, and her hands were curled at the back of his head, the tip of her finger finding where his bones began so she could glide smoothly down his spine, counting each and every bone that was just a bit too crooked, a bit too out of place. Her toes curled against her feet, a loud gasp escaping her mouth when she felt the sharp, quick pain of his teeth against her skin, and then the release, a wet sort of spark starting at her neck and going down her heart, then her stomach, to her thighs, and then feet.

Odin pulled back from leaving the mark on her neck, a blistery sort of cherry red now staining her skin, and he licked his lips, pressing his thumb against her bottom lip.

“Take it off,” Ava whispered, not sure if she was mouthing it, or actually speaking aloud, but she closed her eyes, pinching the key tied around her neck with her thumb and forefinger. “Take it off of me.”

He did, though slowly, to keep her hair from getting caught. When it was in his hand, he held it out, letting it turn back and forth like wind chimes before a summer thunderstorm. There was no music this time, no warning from any fairies to be heard of.

“I wanna go to sleep,” the girl mumbled, closing her eyes again after watching Odin place the key onto the table. She rolled her head against the pillow, but reached out anyways to wrap her arm around his neck, pulling him to the bed to lay beside her.

It was slow again. Not from the smoked flower petals, or from the delirious haze they had created in the night, or from laying still for so long. It was because they realized they were studying each other very, very carefully, like an artist trying to recall the most painful, or genius, or heartbreaking details of a painting. Who put them there, or how did they come to be. Perhaps there was a scar that looked different in this dim light, or an angle unseen before, like a photograph being held against a mirror. It would take months, perhaps years, to be a finished work of art, they realized. It was happening so slowly too, as creating art itself became tedious, meticulous work that demanded to be made. He whispered to her a reminder to keep breathing, tapping her on the tip of her nose briskly. It made her smile gingerly, but then she looked away, if only for a moment. That was how it was done, she admonished, feeling him carefully pull her hair off her neck, letting cool air meet her burning skin. You have to allow yourself to keep breathing if you want to feel yourself become a finished work of art.

Ava’s face burned when he kissed her, at first light enough to barely feel, and then neither of them pulled away. The kisses became faster now, more desperate than before, as if the only right thing to do was to touch, or push and pull against each other. They held on now, gasping and breathing into each other’s open mouths when the heat spread and their tongues began to taste, rather than speak.

Odin pulled back, breathing hard and blinking, the corners of his eyes red. He kept blinking, as if he couldn’t believe something he’d just thought, his eyes closing half shut sleepily. He placed his hand over his heart, and then laughed. Ava blinked, her hair spread over the pillow, her body shuddering as she took a deep breath. His shoulder blades stuck out like bird wings, she thought. If he were trying to fly, to get away, they would never work.

She pressed the side of her face into the pillow, and closed her eyes, and asked for a story, knowing it wouldn’t be a very well-thought out one, but it was nice to hear a voice when she fell asleep. A voice other than the one in her head, that is.

“Th-There’s a story, about a fox,” he began, brushing her red hair behind her ear. “My m-mom used to tell it to me. A sneaky, smart f-fox in the woods, who c-caught bad dreams in his fur.”

Ava opened her eyes, not moving. They didn’t say anything for a moment, watching each other’s chest rise and fall. Before he began again, the girl reached out, plucking an eyelash off his cheek, then smiling as he tried to blow it off her finger. It wouldn’t budge. Eventually there just seemed to be no use in making a wish tonight.

“He b-became very heavy with everyone’s d-dreams, and he couldn’t hunt. He c-couldn’t run. It was s-s-sad, Ava.”

He buried his face into the pillow, shuddering, for what she didn’t know, unless the image of this sick fox hurt him in this way, to want to shut his eyes to the whole world, from her and himself.

“The fox m-met a girl in the woods, and she was s-so young, and didn’t know better, and-” He paused, realizing he was shivering. Ava pulled the blanket bunched at their feet over both of them, scooting in closer so they could share warmth. “-He g-gave her so much sadness. He l-let the girl h-hold him, and-”

Odin furrowed his brow, his eyes darting back and forth. He was looking far off now. Ava began to fall asleep, her head finding a comfortable spot between the pillow and his neck. She wasn’t sure what he said exactly before she drifted off.

Something about how he didn’t remember how the story ends. She thought she could feel his breath over her, as he slept, or maybe it was a kiss on her head, before the hours ticked by into deep, black waters, the undreamable kind where up was down and down was up.

And then, the bed was too empty, and too lacking of what was once there.

Ava sat up, catching her breath, her chest rising and falling as she blinked against the darkness. She reached for her neck, feeling the still-hot bite he had put into her flesh.

She turned, placing her weight on one hand, twisting her body to look around the room, only for her eyes to look into the two blood red slits glowing in the dark. At first she didn’t think it was real, and then she heard the voice.

“You’re lucky, you know.”

She watched Odin as he stood there, knowing he wasn’t really talking, or thinking much of anything, not if the unblinking trance in his bloody clouded eyes had anything to do with it.

“That she’s in you. Because if she wasn’t, I would have killed you already.”

He didn’t laugh. He looked up, pupils gone, a ruby red little hell already pooling its way through his mind and body, a phantom of his former self lost somewhere in the bedsheets beside her. She didn’t like how Pedri was using Odin’s smile to look at her, or how perfect it was imitated, probably from years of practice. Her key, Wrathia’s heart, was in his crooked hand, and he was tracing the sharp tip over his lips, smiling, with nothing to hide, not this time.

“No, you can’t,” she said, but even then she didn’t know if she had said those words aloud.

He lowered his gaze, the slits of two red coffin eyes disappearing from view, almost as if he were sad, or in an instant she realized, as if he were laughing.

She wasn’t sure if the darkness swallowed her first, or him.

When Ava woke at the first signs of light, she didn’t move, not at first. The purple smoke from the night before was gone. It had been replaced by grey light, a lacking color, unsettling and unnerving in that she couldn’t get what she wanted back.

Then she realized Odin Arrow was sleeping soundly next to her. His hands were balled painfully closed together into fists, his entire body tense, with his eyes closed tightly shut and mouth frowning as if someone had just told him he was going to regret waking up. She wished she couldn’t see the string sticking out from his fist.

Ava sat up, tilting her chin, eyeing him seriously. Reaching out, she used the tip of her claw to open his clenched fist, one by one freeing his fingers until his hand was open, like a flower in spring opening to reveal itself, or worse, she thought; a corpse with a secret message still held within its hands, a possible note, or instructions on what to do when he was gone.

She drew in a deep breath, her face unreadable, when she saw her key in his hand. He had been holding it so tightly that its design had been imprinted into his palm. She swallowed, unable to help the curl of her lip, baring her sharp yellowed tooth.

No.

He did remember the story.

The fox kills the girl in the end. He did it slowly, and then smartly, because it was an act of mercy for what he had done, or a coward’s way out of having tainted her with the burden of every sadness, every nightmare, every bottomless dream that is usually forgotten, but not for the fox, who carried its weight with blood-cracked paws and matted fur and aching bones. It depended on who was holding the book. She bit back the urge to feel the place on her neck where Odin had kissed the night before. What angle had he been looking at, she asked of herself, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her palm, still dizzy and confused, remembering what it had felt like to think they had been artists studying each other’s bodies, works of flesh and bone, in love and finally, finally getting to read the other unconditionally with no more games or lies or hidden motives. No more using each other to get what they wanted. She gazed around the room, practically hissing under her breath. He was there. Someone, the wraith, following them both like a plague, always following, always watching. The magma under her skin boiled to a white hot heat, her bones sizzling with the sudden surge of anger. For the first time she hated his ghost, in a way she hadn’t before.

And of course, she thought, he had been made to lie. The story could be read forwards or backwards or from side to side but it would make no difference in the outcome. An animal as smart as the fox should have known better but couldn’t possibly hold himself responsible for his actions, not in the way he had been crafted, not in the way he had been made.

Ava took the key from his hand, but in a split second, went soft once more when she realized it wasn’t a demon in front of her but a boy. Quietly, she leaned down, her hair brushing over his skin as she kissed him on the temple of his head.

The girl pulled away, and stared, knowing it wasn’t always going to be soft, and it was going to hurt. She hadn’t thought much of the love bite she had left at his collarbone, given as they had smoked and rolled on the bed. Small and hardly noticeable, it was a soft watercolor of purple, and she couldn’t take her sight away from it. She wondered how she seemed through someone else’s mirror, or storybook, or photograph, and she wondered how many times Odin had looked at her and been afraid of what was inside her.

It was with a heavy sigh that she placed the key back around her neck, still warm from his touch.

The story provided her a truth she had never asked for, but it told her, in the waking hours of the morning: It is what nature intended. A fox will do what foxes do best, and that is to be the night’s tricksters, handsome enough to intrigue the hunters and devilish enough to anger the farmers, smiley little creatures who never, ever reveal the ending to their stories.


	14. Chapter 14

It seemed at any moment he was going to wake up. 

Ava’s eyes darted from the book in her hands; first to the window above them, just to see the nighttime sky convince her there were better stories to be read in the stars, then to Odin, who was fast asleep, eyes closed, head lolled to the side, beads of water staying placid and tranquil in the curve of his collarbones.

The round blistering burn-mark on his forehead was a hideous red, crusting yellow around the edges, painful to look at but even more painful to touch.

She inhaled very slowly, sinking further into the bathwater, curling her bare shoulders closer in on herself as she raised the book higher. 

The bathwater surrounding them was still warm. No wonder he had fallen asleep so quickly. 

Running her thumb down the length of the page, Ava glanced back up to look out the open window. The moon was so big, and so bright, that she felt her eyes go wider at its beauty. Somewhere she had believed it could make a person sick, to stare without blinking at the moon, just like staring into the sun could blind a person. In the distance she could hear toads croak, and crickets chirp, all melodies of summer nighttime she had heard before, but here, finally realizing she had no reason to escape, she listened to the creatures with a curiosity of childish wonder.

She didn’t mean to slip. The girl had tried pushing her feet against Odin’s side of the tub to pull herself up, but instead her feet slipped, causing her to slide further into the tub and shriek, her hands dropping the book onto the floor while she went underwater. 

She moved in a frenzy to come back up, eyes closed shut, her hair dripping wet against her head. Gasping, she blinked, spitting out the water and rubbing at her eyes. 

Some of the water had spilled over the side, and without thinking she said aloud, “Sorry!” before turning to Odin, expecting to see him awake and watching her fumble about the tub. 

She jerked, halting her movements, her face suddenly going tense with a frown.

He hadn’t woken up. She watched him lay there, just as bare as she was, shoulders slack and the side of his face pressed against the tub.

Ava titled her head, rushing to pull her hair behind her ears, her hand rubbing the water from her face. At seeing him so at peace she placed one hand over her heart without thinking, waiting for the water to settle down once again.

Against the dim light of the moon, she believed he looked more dead than asleep. 

She glanced at the bouquet of daisies resting on the edge of the sink, their petals and stems already drooped and wilting.

Turning back to face him, she said quietly, “Wake up.”

She smiled, laughing to herself short and abrupt when he didn’t.

Scooting down into the water, she wiggled her toes against his hip, smirking at feeling where the bone jut out. 

Still he didn’t move, and Ava sat up, saying, “Odin.”

She watched him for a few more seconds, waiting to see the rise and fall of his chest, but she couldn’t, whether from the dim lighting, or from how unnervingly still he was.

She bent her knees in, moving forward and placing an arm around him so she could sit up and be near enough to see, their faces merely inches apart as she studied him.

The darkness from outside was settling. She could hear the crickets chirp. She could hear the sounds of the back porch door swing open, then shut. The world was falling asleep, and she could too, she thought. The purple veins near his eyes branched out thin and delicate. She pursed her mouth at seeing the ugly burn mark on his forehead, just above his brow, the pus already drying and turning a blistering shade of red and yellow. She frowned at the dark circles beneath his eyes too. 

“Odin, wake up,” she said, lifting her wet hand from the bath and placing it against his face.

In the next instant, his eyes opened, his face shot in panic as he grabbed her by the wrist, sucking in a sharp gust of air and flinching to get away. 

Ava gasped, her eyes going wide at seeing him so panicked, causing her to spit out, “It’s me, it’s only me!” 

The water had sloshed over the side once more, and Odin blinked, staring at her in a confused daze, trying to catch his breath. He was shaking when he looked behind him, to see out the window. 

Ava hovered, cringing at how tightly he was holding onto her wrist. 

She spoke up, saying, “Odin, let go,” her voice going louder with each syllable when his grip became unbearable.

He turned, letting go quickly, his hand absently reaching up to run through his hair when he stopped, feeling where his palm touched the burn on his forehead, its pus still oozing yellow. Shaking, he fumbled for the sides of the tub, pushing himself up then absently bringing his hand to his neck, causing him to look down at his chest when he realized there was nothing there.

Ava felt his knobby knee jab into her thigh when he leaned his torso over the side of the tub, his hand idly brushing over the floor in search of something.

“M-My, My-”

He scoffed in disgust at himself, tossing his shirt to the side. 

Ava draped her arm over the side of the tub, resting her chin atop her forearm, her mouth set in worry.

“Your ring?” she asked above his silence.

He nodded, then immediately halted upon seeing it glimmer red from where it had been wrapped around the sink’s faucet. He turned to look at the water around them. He watched the soap ripples curve around their naked bodies, clinging to the skin of the girl in front of him, and then he spoke under his breath, “What am I doing.”

With that, he pressed his back against the tub, taking a deep, long breath.

Ava felt the wet ends of her hair cling to her back, over her ribcage, sending tendrils of water dripping into the tub, tranquil plip plops of water breaking the silence as they laid there.

“I h-had a dream,” he said, “But it happened s-so quickly that I didn’t-”

He looked up at her. From the outside, moonlight poured in white eerie light, settling over her and reflecting back to him from the water. He shook his head, fighting against the feeling.

“Are y-you okay?” he whispered.

Ava closed her eyes, nodding.

“Tired. Very tired,” she hummed, her words slurred against her arm. “It’s been a tough day.”

Odin ran his hand down his face, mirroring her nod. In the next moment, he took a deep breath, putting his hand over his mouth and nose and forcing himself to plunge under the water.

Ava didn’t move when she felt his hand hold onto her thigh, holding him in place and keeping him submerged for what felt longer than necessary, she believed. 

She scratched her nail against the tub, hoping to scrape off a layer of scum, when the older teenager pushed himself back up, water cascading from his body to return to the bath noisily. 

The girl closed her eyes. The water was becoming cold now.

“We’re going to catch our death in here,” she muttered with a sigh. 

She opened one eye. Upon seeing him messily rub at his eyes over and over, his jaw set, his hands fidgeting over his face, Ava loosened her grip on the tub, joining him by his side to rest against the tub. Carefully she scooted down so she could lay her head to rest against the curve of his neck. He looked down, smiling at her briefly, feeling their bodies press side by side. 

“I d-dreamed I was drowning,” he admitted, placing his palms carefully on top of the water, hoping to coax it to remain calm.

Ava remained silent, remembering the fight that had taken place between him and his brother earlier that evening. This one in particular had ended so badly that she had half a mind to set fire to anything daring enough to get in her way, either to harm her or Odin. The spat had started off about money, then quickly divulged into every account of laziness Odin had shown that week, and then Olai mentioned Odin’s fear of water, a fear used as insult against him; in Olai’s words, “I think you’re a prime example that drowning and freezing to death can really fuck a person’s brain matter up, Odin,” to which, Ava remembered, Odin went very still and silent, not in acceptance but in complete and enthralled anger.

The teenager had given his brother a death glare, grabbing his bedroom door and nearly smiling as he swung it shut in front of Olai’s face. The door had been slammed shut so hard that the framed pictures lining the hallway fell, the glass shattering across the hardwood floor.

What happened next was a blur, in her memory, but colored bright ruby red in rage nonetheless. Olai had flung the bedroom door open, grabbing Odin by the back of the neck and forcing him to look down, speaking so quietly that Ava had held her breath, not moving from her spot on Odin’s bed.

And then, despite her pleas, he had been dragged out, Olai’s fist bunched at the back of Odin’s shirt, leading him into the hallway and down the stairs with Odin stumbling beside him.

Ava dashed across the room, taking hold of the doorway and swinging herself with the momentum to catch up, her feet darting carefully to avoid stepping on the broken glass. She heard the sounds of plastic tubberware bowls spill from the kitchen counter onto the floor, followed by shouting, and then a crash of a kitchen chair echoing throughout the house.

She darted into the kitchen, nearly stumbling backwards at the sight of Odin in a headlock, screaming obscenities as Olai ignored him, brow cocked, his free hand lighting the cigarette clamped in his mouth.

Ava fumbled for the countertop, eyes wide as she watched that flame pulsate from the lighter, mouthing, “ _What are you doing_ ”, before feeling the warmth of another arm brush against her’s, causing her to turn and look into the eyes of his twin sisters. 

They snickered darkly, humming, “He’s done it now…”

Ava heard Olai entreat to his brother, mouth hanging onto his lit cigarette as he spoke, sending puffs of smoke into the air. 

“Tell me yer sorry,” he drawled, holding onto his brother’s neck tighter when Odin jerked away. The teenager had turned, scrambling to free himself, his hands flailing to push against Olai to get away.

Odin hissed a curse at him, knocking his elbow into the kitchen chair, trying to take hold of it and use it to separate him and Olai. 

His brother shoved him to the middle of the kitchen, the one solitary lightbulb shining down on them dead center. Olai’s head bumped into the light, sending the lightbulb to sway back and forth, back and forth, illuminating over Ava’s alarmed expression, then back over the pair of struggling brothers, the cigarette smoke swirling along with the swing of the light. 

“I’ll say it again. Say you’re sorry.”

Odin stubbornly blurted out a decisive “No!”, as he turned in a circle, Olai following closely, joining him in his weak attempt to escape, the ominous light dancing above them.

“You’re so _stupid_ ,” Olai sighed, and with that, he pinched the cigarette from his mouth, to which Ava froze, listening to Odin’s voice take on a different tone as he repeated, “N-No, No, No, No, N-N-O-”

She didn’t move when she felt Raven and Crow’s hands grasp at her arm in anticipation, watching as Olai smothered the cigarette against Odin’s forehead, just beneath his bangs at the temple of his head.

He kicked out, squeezing his eyes shut and biting his lip, refusing to open his mouth, pretending he could take it, as if he could handle the pain, refusing to give Olai what he wanted, but another second passed, and the white hot pain caused him to stomp at the tiled floor, a jumbled, disarrayed frenzy of words mixed with his own scream, coming forth in a panic.

Ava had backed away, her line of sight falling to the front door. 

She could run, she realized. She could avoid such an atrocity being done before her.

When she looked back at Odin, something in her heart stuttered, and her body moved faster than she had asked of it, sending her across the kitchen floor.

She slapped Olai across the face, so hard and so loud that time seemed to freeze in place. 

She halted for a split second before remembering what was transpiring, so she used all her strength to push at Olai’s shoulder and wrap her arm around Odin’s, pulling them apart and making sure she was between them. 

Olai held at his face, his eyes darkening at her. 

Ava pointed her finger at him, her entire body shaking, but despite this, she spoke, as loudly as she could muster, “Don’t…ever touch him. Ever.” She swallowed thickly, huge brown eyes going even wider when Olai took a step forward. Instantly she stepped aside, one arm splayed over Odin’s chest. 

“This isn’t your house,” Olai spoke, his frame looming over her. “He isn’t your brother.”

Ava scoffed in disgust, biting back, “He isn’t yours to hurt.”

Olai narrowed his eyes. When he noticed his sisters huddled by the doorway, he snapped his fingers, yelling, “Get back to your rooms!” The girls teetered on the soles of their feet, ducking swiftly out of sight, their feet heard running throughout the house and up the stairs.

He turned his attention back to Ava, adding, “Get out of my sight. Both of you.” He looked to Odin, who glared right back, one hand covering his forehead. 

Ava recalled the pair of them backing away, taking quick languid steps up the stairs and into the bathroom. 

She cried at seeing the burned skin when she held his face in her hands, pulling back his hair to see his injury. In the dying light of sunset Odin repeated over and over, asking her to stop crying, but she nearly jumped out of her skin, yelling, “I’m going to cry, stop trying to tell me I don’t need to cry about this, just shut up and let me cry.”

And so they remained like this, quiet, save for Ava’s sniffling as Odin carefully looked in the mirror, patting a wet paper towel over the burn but flinching whenever it touched.

“S-Stop crying,” he said again, running the towel over the sink’s water once more. 

“And tell me why I should stop crying,” she said back, the intensity of her words fading as she brought the sleeve of her shirt to wipe at her nose.

“Because,” he began, looking into the mirror and dabbing at his injury.

His voice was too high, too strained when he continued.

“You’re going to m-make me c-cry.”

And he was right. Ava crossed her arms and tilted her chin and felt the weight of this household fall upon her shoulders as a tear fell from his eye into the swirling, bloody water in the sink.

It was not the last tear, because another one followed, and then another, and with each one Ava felt her composure become less and less until he turned, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth, his eyes red and watery as he simply just shook his head, the pain all too evident in his eyes. 

He grabbed at the sink to steady himself, but couldn’t, his hand slipping, and as he caught himself he said aloud, “I wish th-they’d just hurry up and k-kill me.”

At saying this aloud, he covered his eyes with one hand, holding his breath, before bringing both hands to his face, hiding himself when a fitful sob broke through. 

Ava drew in a sharp breath, reaching out, but as if he couldn’t stand it, Odin choked, lowering his hands, the tears smeared all over his hands and face as he returned to the sink, turning the faucet back on and leaning down to splash water over his face. When he lifted himself, his expression was forcibly bored, as if he couldn’t care less about the pain, as if none of it had mattered.

Ava gazed out the window, arms crossed, one foot bearing more weight than the other. She looked to the floor, listening to the sounds of their combined weight creak against the floorboards, before she looked back to the window.

The sunset was promising to be beautiful. Already the sky was warming into a homey shade of orange.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, not sure if this was the right question to ask at this time, but regardless hoping he would understand what she meant by it.

Odin shook his hands out in the sink, clearing his throat.

“I w-want to prove him wrong.”

Ava quirked her brow, asking, “And how are you doing to do that?”

Odin became uneasy at the question, dropping his head down and looking away with one elbow propped against the sink’s counter. He rubbed his hand over the back of his head before pulling back up, saying, “I want you to d-drown me.”

He watched her reaction of course, his face burning when she peered to the side, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other. 

“I’m going to tell you what I think,” she said, placing her palms flat together in front of her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, and I don’t think it will prove anything.”

Odin shuffled from one foot to the other, holding onto one arm, his body concave towards himself.

The younger girl propped her elbow upon the sink, studying him, keeping her voice steady to at least try to keep him from feeling ashamed no more than he’d already been that day.

“Whatever’s going on with you and Olai, it’s not worth hurting yourself over,” she said, absently reaching out and letting the warm water run over her fingers. She saw its reflection shimmer white, and then she continued on, knowing he was listening.

“We can do something else tonight.”

Ava looked up, glancing over at the tub. She had fallen in love with its antique turquoise color, at how finely carved and laden the clawed brass feet had been built into the foundation of the Arrow home.

She had imagined herself taking a bath in it, always with the hot water filled to the very top. Now, she tilted her head at Odin, raising her brows, then quickly side-glancing the tub again with a nod. 

Odin looked behind him, his face unreadable as Ava moved past him, saying, “I’m not drowning you in there, just so you know. We could just…stop.”

She went to the window, opening it and letting fresh summer evening air float into the bathroom. 

“Forget everything. We could take a bath,” she added. Curiously, she poked her head out, looking down and wondering how far a drop it was to the ground below them. 

“Y-You’re okay with that?”

Ava leaned forward even further, smiling at the rosebush that was wildly growing its way up his house, just beside the window. It had bloomed bright and red this year, despite being chewed by june-bugs, or having been picked and pulled upon by his younger sisters. 

“It’s fine,” she called out. She turned, mumbling over her shoulder but keeping her eyes locked to the floor. “It’s not like we haven’t seen each other without clothes on before.”

Odin chuckled to himself, quickly reaching to rub behind the back of his head before going quiet, pulling the back of his shirt off and over his head. 

Ava scooted away from the window, not wanting to take her eyes off the roses. It was a shame, she thought, turning the bath faucet as hot as the water would allow, that she couldn’t reach those roses from this window. 

———

It had been quiet in the tub. They took turns reading aloud from the book, stopping when they heard footsteps trudge up the stairs, their eyes meeting very seriously for a moment when the footsteps came closer, than they’d snicker to themselves when the steps continued away and down the hall, leaving them alone and together in the bath. 

Odin didn’t say anything about how hot the water was. It had fogged over the mirror, making the air difficult to breathe in, his skin becoming uncomfortably hot, but before he said anything against it he watched her, seeing her content smile, eyes closed, her head just above water. 

At seeing her joy, he smiled to himself, returning back to the book.

He didn’t have to look at the clock to know he was taking a long time to read one page, so he halted, speaking up, “Do you j-just want to read the rest?”

Ava slowly opened her eyes, keeping them halfheartedly open as she offered a small smile, asking, “Why? I like hearing you read.”

Odin concentrated on the words in front of him, his eyes darting over it as he said, “It’s t-taken me forever to read one p-page Ava.”

“And so?” 

Odin peered over the top of the book, the printed words meshing in his vision against her red hair. 

“And _so_ , the s-story sounds bad because of how I’m r-r-re-read”

He paused, jaw set, closing his eyes with a sigh before forcing himself to continue. 

“I’m r-reading it bad.”

Ava lifted her hands, smoothing them over the calm water’s surface, hearing the tiny waves she was creating slosh against the side. “I’ll read it then, for the time being,” she returned. 

Odin hesitated, going over the words silently to himself, imagining himself getting through the chapter despite the choppiness of his speech.

He brushed his feet against the curve of her hip, then asked, “Are you s-sure you don’t mind?”

Ava reached down, grabbing him by his ankle, her voice going soft as she wrinkled her nose in a grin.

“I’m sure. Keep going.”

He smiled back, quickly reaching to push his hair off his forehead, the cigarette burn still sending spits of pain with each heartbeat. 

Before he opened his mouth to start where he left off, he paused, watching her close her eyes, her body nearly submerged completely into the water. He had seen the scars criss-crossed across her shoulders dozens of times before, either outside, in a sundress, the summer heat causing her to bunch her hair into a ponytail off her neck, or on the bed, pretending to fall asleep when really they were waiting to see who would close their eyes first. He didn’t stare at the scars. He had touched them, always gently running a fingertip and feeling his heart lurch at how deep some of the indents were.

He had thought terrible things about those scars, curiosity shrouding over empathy when his inner voice whispered, _How could you hate yourself this much? Tell me. I want to know how._

_I want to know what it’s like to tear myself apart the way you do._

He asked, in the hopefulness one can have when they see sunset being reflected back to them from placid still water, “Wh-What did those feel like?”

Ava opened her eyes sleepily once more, and upon seeing him looking at her scars, she reached up, running her fingertips over them as she tilted her mouth from the water to speak. 

“It hurt. But it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever felt.”

She side-eyed the tub, studying the rose patterns of the shower curtain beside them. Remembering at one time or another, she had had the sick, gut-wrenching thought that she wanted to paint herself red. Another story had done that, except they had painted white roses red, something she thought was funny but unreachable no matter how hard she tried. 

She stopped herself before she could add that he already knew what it felt like, to be in pain like she had. The cigarette burn looked terrible to look at, and she imagined it felt even worse. She wrapped her arms around herself, refusing to think of the boy in front of her as some sort of human ashtray, her skin recoiling in heated anger at seeing him mocked and humiliated by his own family, something she had complacently allowed to be done to herself for all her life.

Instead, she repeated again, “Keep going. I like this story.”

With that, he cleared his throat, settling into the hot bathwater and continuing the story about a girl named Alice, who fell down the rabbit hole and followed the ways of a world that never made any sense.


	15. can you hear me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing request from tumblr i finished, with the prompt 11. can you hear me, ava/odin

Closing her eyes, taking a deep breath of smoke, the sharp tang stinging at the bottom of her lungs before finally being released from her mouth, Ava smiled, slowly at first, and then without restraint, bringing clawed nails to her mouth to play with her teeth.

He was still asleep.

Or dead, she mused. At the unfortunate thought, Ava sighed, tapping the pipe against her thumb, the purple petals falling and curling onto the ground, shriveling in on themselves as she watched, one eyebrow raised.

In her lap was his journal, open, the pages creased where she had impatiently flipped, back and forth, dancing over the entire collection of strange symbols and flurried markings and unexplained doodles. Ava ran her tongue over her teeth, pricking her tongue with the sharpness to taste blood while looking over the writing again, her eyes narrowing in concentration.

She couldn’t understand a word of it. A few words looked familiar but she couldn’t reason with herself if it was because she truly knew it, or because she wanted to believe she knew it.

The symbols made her look off into the distance, her chin resting in her palm, listening to the melancholic creak and groan of the establishment she had destroyed, feeling soft flurries of ash land on her nose and eyelashes.

The girl flipped through the pages carelessly, faster and faster, wracking her brain with what they could possibly mean, what agenda he had when he wrote in this journal, when-

She stopped, her eyes resting on a drawing of her, her pact drawer exposed completely on her chest.

Ava looked to the girl Odin had drawn, and then scratched at the horns on her head, still itching and dried with blood at the root.

In the silence, Ava heard outcries come from outside, mingling shrilly enough that she smiled, imagining it to be the angel’s mournful chorus from above, but immediately she swallowed, frowning when the melody suddenly flashed with floods of screams and blood and bone.

“Can you hear me?” she asked, forcefully closing the journal shut and dropping it aside, causing a plume of dust to burst into the air, steadily floating in all directions.

Decidedly, Ava stood, careful to balance his pipe in her left hand while brushing the ash from her dress with her right. One step across the threshold, and she had two clawed, bare feet on either side of Odin, reaching down with her free hand to grab the front of his shirt and bring his neck to her face.

She breathed at his pulse, mumbling, “You don’t smell dead.”

She drew back, thoughtlessly letting go of his shirt but in a split second gasped, scrambling forward to catch him before he hit the ground. The pipe crashed to the ground, pinging and rolling out of sight as Ava caught him, her hands going at the back of his neck, her own knuckles scrapping painfully at the rock and brimstone. Ava stared, letting out a sigh of relief, before looking around at the emptiness. 

Her laughter echoed, bouncing off the grey desolate cavern she created.

“Oh wow,” she snickered, slowly letting Odin’s unconscious body rest on the ground once more. “That could’ve been so _bad_.” She continued giggling, biting on her knuckle, stepping away in search of the boy’s pipe. 

Pushing at a beam of steel, Ava snaked her leg underneath, her toes curling and tapping, the scratch of nail against stone making sparks ignite and the air shriek aloud.

“What I’m saying is,” she continued, aware he was still asleep and in no way hearing her, “you do not smell dead. I mean, I smelled it, back there, in the auditorium, and you wouldn’t believe how bad it reeked. And the _screaming_. I’ve never heard screaming like that before.”

“But you still smell like pine. And something else. Something I didn’t notice before.”

Ava ducked down, feeling the pipe and grasping for it, long fingers sending another cloud of ash to build and settle over the corridor. She turned to him, placing the pipe back in her mouth, her eyes going cross-eyed as she used her fingers to snap a spark into its petals, one lone flame being controlled on her thumb.

“You smell like dread.”

With that she settled back to the floor beside him, cross legged and endlessly curious as to what would happen when they came for her.

“Truth or Dare,” she started, stretching out her fingers to study the new sharpness of her bones, the length and heat of her hands.

“Truth. I’m a bit worn out from what happened.”

Ava scraped her nail back and forth over her knee, frowning. Taking a deep inhale of smoke, she sighed, “I’m tired.”

Her eyes trailed over him lazily, half opened, finding no inspiration to rouse him from his sleep. 

Ash had settled like snow over his thin frame, and Ava smiled.

“Okay, dare. I-”

She smiled even wider, exposing row by row of tiny yellow milk teeth, perfectly pointed, demanding of her voice. She hummed a tune light and happy as she reached out, fingers playing an imaginary piano over his ribs.

“Dare. I dare you to-”

She settled lower to the ground, balancing her chin in her hands, her elbows propping her up so she could be closer. Upon feeling his slow breathing brush over her arms, Ava scooted her body to the ground, one hand pressed into the ash, leaving a print, and the other taking one more breath of smoke. 

She craned her neck to exhale the purple smoke above them. Pressing her stomach flat against the ground, her chin resting on top of her folded hands, Ava bit her bottom lip, eyes flashing over his unconscious face before licking her lips and moving closer. 

She had meant to kiss him, silently and quickly and discreetly, enough to know what it was like, to have that and more in her hands once this day was done.

Her lips barely brushed against his when she felt something tickling her cheek, and she opened her eyes to see Odin’s opened too.

Ava jerked away, feeling an old inferiority prick at the back of her skull, making her entire body ignite in a rush of magma and burning gold as Odin simply lay there, neck bent at an awkward angle, mouth ajar and lungs suddenly picking up pace, eyes half opened, watching her.

He took in a deep, shuddering breath. His mouth moved to speak, but no sound came out, his tongue smacking against the roof of his mouth before he closed his eyes and fell back into unnerving stillness once again.

Ava found herself holding her breath, forcing herself to finally exhale, her shoulders going slack with relief. The girl looked to the black charred ceiling. She looked at the light, serene, holy even, pouring in from the open wounds she had made. When she was sure he had fallen back asleep, Ava lowered herself to the floor until she was laying beside him, keeping her body to herself, her own red hair splayed behind her like silk.

She retraced her steps, remembering the heat, and the power, and the fun of so much control, of all the lights swarming and pulsating within and around her. Ava smiled, then realized how she had been studying his face, this time close enough to see the purple veins branch out from his eyelids, to the jutting bone of his cheek. The scar over the bridge of his nose made her reach out and press her fingertip there, gliding across before settling under his eye, soft thin skin that indented the more she pushed down.

What had he said before? Something about running away. Something along the words of “come with me”, disjointed in his stutter. She remembered the earnest plea in his voice, memories of a soft, worn jacket being offered to her, the chance to walk and talk with someone for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.

The smoke from the pipe curled purple into the air, wistful plumes of hazy, rosy pink clouding her eyes.

Ava buried the side of her face in the ash, breathing happily, a wave of content washing over her, when abruptly the sound of grating metal echoed from the other side of the corridor, followed by yelling.

She went to her feet, fists balled at her sides, her glare darkening. Like a lion in a cage, she paced back and forth, stepping forward before growling in disgust as she forced herself back, her eyes darting to Odin’s unconscious body.

Shaking out her hands, she bounced on her feet, looking from him, to the white light coming for her, back to him, and then behind her, to the safety of the darkness.

A startling disarray of swears boiled from her mouth as she took his journal from the floor, being quick to shut it away in her chest, the slam of the wood drawer making her gasp, and then without another second to lose, she stuffed the pipe back in his pocket, the remaining petals spilling from his pocket to the ground.

Ava stooped, ducking an arm under his as she took a step forward, wrapping her other arm around him until his back pressed against her chest, his head rolling to the side, causing her to feel his weight go heavy against her.

Ava breathed out tersely, her mouth getting caught in his hair, “They’re coming for me.” It was a whisper, her yellow eyes glowing brighter the further she dragged him into the darkness. 

“Truth: I could fight them. It would be too easy.”

She grinned, her grip around his body growing tighter, his boots scraping along the ash, clouds of grey glittering in the air like diamonds.

“Dare: Let’s see how far we can runaway.”

In the light from above, two imprints stayed still, illuminated. One looked like a corpse, killed from the fire, another looked like a creature mourning its death, dips of their hips and hands and knees creating ripples in the grey powder.

The flower petals withered in defeat, and were reduced to the ash around them, giving way to the soles of running feet in search of a killer.


	16. unfinished wip - high school au

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an unfinished wip of a much longer fic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> based on a high school/college au.

It hurt to move.

Odin was about to say this out loud, his face twisting in a grimace as he moved to sit up in the cab of his truck.

Black studded stars wormed their way into his vision and he halted, blinking them away and going very still, and very quiet.

She was crying.

The sound was muffled, coming from outside. He stayed still, narrowing his eyes, focusing on her lone shadow, that dark figure caught in the drizzle of rain. Smoke curled from her fingers, and Odin closed his eyes, reaching to place his hand over his heart, the back of his head hitting the window just as his body relented into darkness once again.

“You’re really sick.”

He heard these words first. It brought him back, from where he didn’t know, but Odin opened his eyes again to see the overhead light of the cab shining bright.

Ava watched as his pupils constricted to pinpoints, his breathing startled as he felt around him. The seat stuck to his neck with dry sweat, cracking as he lifted himself up. Ava shook her head, soundlessly encouraging him to lay back down, eyebrows knitted in worry.

She was reaching for his pack of cigarettes when his voice carried low and muffled, “Did you drive?”

Ava pinched the cigarette out of the pack, feeling the weight as she rolled it between two fingers.

This was no time for games, however.

“I did,” she answered, scooting back to search her jeans pocket for the lighter.

Odin sat up, blearily gazing down at the gas and brake pedals, then to the manual shift.

He let his gaze stare at her incredulously, eyes half-lidded.

All she did was let her smile slip, igniting the flame to the cigarette and breathing in its heavy smoke, flecks of amber swirling and tumbling in the air as Ava reached to crank the window down.

Feeling the cool autumn rain over her face, Ava tensed her body, then released, her body going warm. She turned to look at Odin, his body sprawled over the truck’s cab, legs bent awkwardly, one arm dangling off the side.

Ava tossed the pack, missing the target of his chest entirely. It smacked against the cab door, rebounding and falling with a sad thud to the floor.

She heard the sound of air quickly leaving his lungs, an amusing little laugh that was so quiet but felt so loud, causing her face to burn. She looked out the window, watching tendrils of rain bounce off the ground.


	17. prompt - fistfight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a prompt from my tumblr: fistfight, ava's demon.

It was easy to make people afraid.

The thrill of breaking skin, of the shouting and yelling, the push and pull. The resistance of another when they realize they couldn’t possibly win, couldn’t have possibly estimated how pointless it would be to fight back against someone who refused to give up.

Maggie relished this. The thrill was in the power, but more so in knowing no matter what, her will to win was always stronger than her opponent’s.

She wasn’t sure what was different this time then.

The crowd was dispersing, shuffling, yelling. A few students had retreated, calling for a teacher. Others were shouting for their friends to come watch. The other girl was scrambling to get away, her elbows and shins scraping painfully against asphalt. She shouted her slurs at the Maggie, all bark and no bite, and still Maggie could see the plea in her eyes say, “I’m leaving. You win, you win.”

Maggie made to stomp forward, to at least demand an apology, or to instill one last pang of fear into her and everyone around her, but stopped.

Her line of sight fell on two huge brown eyes watching from the crowd, her small frame nearly swallowed by the sea of people. The girl’s hands were at her chest.

Her eyes seemed to plead too, not with submission, but with sadness.

Maggie couldn’t unclench her fists. She stood there, shaking, breathing hard. She blinked at Ava, and yet they only met eyes for a moment before the world stirred dizzily back into action.

The girl on the ground cried, getting up and darting away. The crowd dissipated, along with Ava Ire.

Maggie looked at her hand. Specks of blood dotted her like freckles. She frowned, wiping it at her jeans, looking all around her before walking away, intent on washing her hands before ditching the rest of her classes.


	18. prompt - An abandoned or empty place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a prompt from my tumblr: An abandoned or empty place, ava's demon.

“Where are we?”

Ava looked all around. The sky was grey, the ground was black, frosted over with ice. A bitterly cold wind blew, then settled over her like a blanket, as if this unbearable cold was trying to be a welcoming host.

Ava shrugged away this invisible entity, her bare feet crunching against the surface. She made to ask again, reaching out to brush her hand against the back of Odin’s head, but he turned, looking up at her from where he sat cross-legged on the ground. 

“Th-This is where I come to think.”

Ava looked up, bewildered for a moment. She retraced her steps, remembering the warmth of a sleeping bag, her hand nearly touching Odin’s as he slept beside her.

The girl inhaled. The air was sharp, cold enough to cut deep into her lungs. Wisps of smoke bleared her vision, and then the calm returned. 

Odin put his head into his hands, murmuring a regret, touching the sharp blades of obsidian grass beneath him.

“There’s nothing here,” Ava remarked. She looked all around her, but could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. Never before had she felt so trapped in a mind vast enough to contain thousands if not millions of worlds and possibilities.

Odin shook his head. 

“I didn’t w-want you to come here.” 

He hunched forward, then scratched at the back of his head. 

“Can we-”

He paused, squinting at the ground, closing his eyes for a second before looking up at Ava Ire, a seriousness to his voice that bordered on desperation.

“C-Can we find your mind?”

He pinched at a blade of void, tearing it away to become ash that blew in the wind.

Ava stepped forward, unsure of where to go first, what direction to embark on.

A way out, she thought. 

A way out from the nothingness.


	19. prompt - When it rains/snows/storms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt from my tumblr: When it rains/snows/storms, ava's demon

At age five, Ava Ire discovered her love of rain. She cherished these days, believing there was nothing better than hopping from one puddle to the next, laughing and darting, feeling the raindrops plop like kisses on her nose. She faced the sky, grinning wide, eyes shut. From inside her bedroom she watched rain splash against her window, connecting, dispersing, playing and washing the world new. Her bed was warmer on rainy days. Tea tasted more sweet and kind on rainy days.

At age ten, Ava Ire discovered her hatred of snow. She pondered upon this new dislike, watching snowfall continue well into the night from the safety of the indoors. At first it was harmless enough, its innocence lying in its soft powdery decadence, how her classmates cheered at seeing it accumulate through the night. Her hatred came sudden, so sudden that the memory caused her to wince. The bite of the cold burned her eyes, made her shake and shiver. She slipped on the ice, receiving mockery from her classmates. In unison they pushed her into the snow, only to push her in again when she tried to get up, struggling against the weight of her winter coat. She loathed the snow. It laughed at her unforgivingly, cruelly. 

At age 15, Ava Ire discovered the storm. It was made of fire and heat, of magma and blinding power. The flames licked and rolled and made her laugh, made her scrunch up her toes, raise her hands higher and higher. The storm enveloped her, the very eye, and she, Ava Ire, relished in all the lava and magic the storm had to offer.

It burned. She found herself burning, endlessly, eternally.


End file.
